Azimut Aktie

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Azimut Holding First Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Giorgio Medda, Chief Executive Officer of Azimut Holding. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Azimut's First Quarter 2026 Results Presentation. As you know, I'm Giorgio Medda, CEO of the group, and I'm pleased to be here in Milan with Alessandro Zambotti, our CEO and Group CFO; and Alex Soppera, Head of Investor Relations. So following a defining and record-breaking 2025, I'm quite proud to say that the first 3 months of 2026 have proven that our growth trajectory is indeed structural and accelerating. We have started the year exceptionally well, setting a very powerful pace that underpins another year of expected high-quality growth.

So let's get started and move to Slide #3, please. Despite adverse and volatile market conditions during the quarter, our teams across the globe have once again demonstrated the true strength, scalability and resilience of our diversified business model. We closed the first quarter achieving a staggering EUR 4.6 billion in net inflows, an absolute record alongside a highly solid net profit of EUR 125 million. Importantly, I want to highlight that EUR 4 billion of these inflows were entirely organic, making it our best result on record for organic growth, and this translates also in attractive double-digit growth in recurring net profit.

Alongside these strong operating numbers, we are making steady progress on our broader strategic priorities. First of all, in the U.S., we have successfully integrated NSI, further strengthening our footprint in the world's largest wealth market and where we are about to launch a suite of active ETFs, bringing our market-leading global asset management capabilities directly to American investors.

Meanwhile, the TNB spin-off remains firmly on track. It is a transformational step, I remind you, for the group that will unlock significant value, and we are working diligently towards this completion, and Alessandro will discuss it in more detail later in the presentation. And on the back of the strong start of the year and our continued operating momentum, we confidently confirm our full year 2026 guidance of EUR 10 billion in net inflows and EUR 550 million in net profit.

And with that, let us please move to Page #4. Here, we detail the financial metrics that underscore this robust start to the year. Total assets reached EUR 144 billion at the end of March, up 32% year-on-year, and this reflects both strong organic growth and the continued expansion of our global platform. In terms of net inflows, the story here is the sustained commercial momentum of our global platform with half of inflows generated outside of our domestic operations remains strong and continue to be the cornerstone of our success. Importantly, this growth is translated directly into high-quality financial growth. Looking at the top line, we delivered EUR 371 million of revenues with recurring revenues up 14% year-on-year, and this is highlighting the resilience of our business mix.

The same momentum is visible in profitability with recurring EBIT increasing by 14% and group net profit reaching EUR 125 million, with recurring net profit actually being up 15% year-on-year. Let me also highlight that global operations have contributed EUR 14 million of net profit, representing 12% of the group's total. This contribution is still below its long-term potential and was temporarily impacted by transitory items and business growth effects as we scale our platform. However, the direction is clear, and we expect this contribution to continue growing as our global platform matures. In summary, Q1 2026 set the pace for another year of robust and sustainable growth.

So turning to Slide 5. We look here at the bridge from our reported net profit of EUR 115 million in the first quarter of 2025 to our current EUR 125 million. As the title of this slide suggests, this is a clear story of high-quality earnings expansion, driving record profitability. So we start from the left, and you can see here very clearly a strong 14% uplift in our recurring operating performance after cost. If you want to see that differently, we grew by EUR 20 million. We also generated EUR 4 million in better performance fees, split equally across both our mutual funds and our insurance products. And let me remind you that this has been done during a quarter where market conditions certainly were not the easiest for everyone.

However, it's important to note that the markets around the world and our global operations book performance fees on a semiannual basis. Hence, there will be certainly a better contribution coming at the end of Q2. The strong positive operating drivers were only slightly offset by a EUR 2 million impact from our strategic affiliates and GP stakes, primarily due to lower dividends from the GP stake in business and due to an EUR 11 million impact from other items below EBIT, and Alessandro will detail on those later. While this reflects higher gains on our own investments year-on-year and the continued strong growth on Nova, there were some negative fair value options net of nonoperating costs, finance expenses and higher minorities. So yes, the ultimate takeaway from this bridge is that our recurring net profit grew by an impressive 15% year-on-year, reaching EUR 128 million.

Now turning to Slide 6 and 7 very briefly. We provide here a deeper look under the hood of our reclassified profit and loss statements by business lines and geography. So we start with Integrated Solutions, Slide 6, which is our core business dedicated to retail and affluent customers. Here, our clients, let me remind you, daily benefit from our full vertical integration and the direct synergy of our investment professionals and financial advisers. As a result, this business commands superior margins and as we are seeing robust growth here, coupled with disciplined cost control. in Italy, we see this vertical expanding across all metrics, ultimately, our recurring net profit margin increasing year-on-year to 71 basis points.

In our Global Wealth division, the higher net profit margin year-over-year reflects the scalability of our proposition across our key international financial hubs and the resulting increase in recurring and ancillary revenues. Looking at our institutional and wholesale business, we delivered strong asset revenue growth driven primarily by Nova and NSI. While the bottom line for this specific segment is temporarily impacted as we integrate the latter, NSI into our platform, we remain highly confident that the strategic value and the future revenue potential will unfold in short order already during the course of 2026.

So finally, looking at our strategic affiliates, we are seeing that strong business growth is progressively and finally translating into improved profitability, yet impacted by financing costs as investments are still in an expansion phase. So moving to Slide 7 and zooming in by region. The message is very much the same and consistent across our entire global footprint. In Italia, we continue seeing outstanding resilience and commercial momentum with our net profit reaching EUR 110 million and our recurring net profit margin remaining exceptionally strong at 67 basis points.

Globally, top line growth in America is being driven by the perimeter change. I mean, we said following the consolidation of NSI. And while the net profit contribution from this global operation is temporarily impacted right now, it's fully expected to unfold progressively as we bring these assets to scale. And all of this, while maintaining a healthy group recurring net profit margin of -- sorry, 41 basis points. Ultimately, the takeaway from both of these slides is clear, continued platform expansion, resilient margins supported by cost discipline are driving our net profit increase across Italy, the Americas, the Asia Pacific region and Europe and the Middle East areas.

So now moving to Slide 8, more on the qualitative side of our business performance. We see that our commitment to global excellence, global local expertise is benefiting not only our clients, it was also recognized by the industry. On this slide, you see a selection of recent awards that we have won around the world. I'm particularly proud to highlight that Azimut was recently named the World's Best Independent Wealth Manager at the Private Banking Awards 2026 by Euromoney in Singapore. This prestigious global recognition highlights the strength and consistency of our independent business model. It acknowledges our commitment to excellence and our ability to combine a solid international presence with a long-term strategic vision. And all this, in turn, allow us to deliver high-quality tailored advice services to clients worldwide.

Beyond this overarching global award, you will see top recognitions across our entire asset management platform. For example, in Brazil, AZ Quest was recognized at the Melhore do Mercado 2026 Awards organized by Exame & BTG Pactual. Furthermore, in the United States, North Square Investments was named as a winner at the 2026 Lipper Fund Awards for its preferred income securities fund. From the Americas, our specialized Islamic funds and our Asian wealth management teams, our investment capabilities are being celebrated locally and globally. This broad success proves that we are delivering superior performance and measurable client value in each market we operate in.

And turning to Slide 9. We zoom here on the performance of our Italian clients, and we look at the net weighted average performance that we have delivered since the start of the year, as I mentioned earlier, in adverse and volatile market conditions. We had a very solid start. And certainly, the period was not easy for everyone in the market, but we managed to overcome the sharp turbulence in March triggered by the geopolitical anxieties that led to a sharp and sudden market correction. However, our teams have stayed highly disciplined, maintaining a constant dialogue between our portfolio managers, our financial advisers and ultimately, our clients, and we have successfully navigated this complexity.

I'm pleased to report that despite the highly unpredictable market, our net weighted average performance delivered to clients year-to-date is at 2.1% that is currently beating the industry benchmark by about 50 basis points. So furthermore, our outlook remains confident with resilient global growth, solid corporate earnings and the potential easing of global trade tensions expected in mid-May, we are perfectly positioned to capture further upside for our clients.

At the same time, let me stress that we are driving forward our strategic expansion and continuous product innovation in private markets. And certainly here, empowered by our global ecosystem, we recently secured exclusive access for our Italian clients to a prominent U.S. artificial intelligence project, allowing them to co-invest alongside leading institutional investors. And including this club deal, our private markets inflows in recent months have exceeded EUR 950 million. projecting us firmly towards our goal to -- of over EUR 2 billion of private market fund raising by the end of this year. And with this, I hand over to Alessandro to give you more insights into our financials.

Yes. Thank you, Giorgio, and good afternoon to everyone. So moving to Slide 10, and let us break down the quality of the revenues. Total revenues reached EUR 371 million, which represents a solid 15% increase year-on-year. This was primarily driven by our recurring fees, which grew by nearly EUR 39 million or 14% year-on-year. If we break this down further, our global businesses grew by EUR 28 million and this was significantly boosted by an EUR 18 million perimeter effect from the successful integration of NSI, Kennedy Capital, HighPost and [ Knox ].

And furthermore, our existing global business added almost EUR 9 million, led by solid organic growth in Brazil, Singapore and Egypt. It's also looking to Italy, we also delivered strong growth across all the business lines, charging over EUR 10 million to our recurring fees. And this was supported by the usage perimeter of the public fund, the private market fund, our advisory service and also our partnership of Nova. And while we achieved impressive double-digit growth year-on-year, and let me spend also a moment comparing these figures against the fourth quarter. We achieved quarterly growth despite the natural headwind of having fewer billing days in February. And if we adjust for those missing days and account for the adverse March market that Giorgio mentioned before, our actual growth is actually higher than compared to the quarter.

So therefore, we look confidently ahead the increasing of the figures further over the remainder of -- the remaining part of the year. Looking at performance fees, we recorded a EUR 2 million increase year-on-year. This positive result was mainly driven by momentum in Monaco, Singapore, Turkey and Switzerland, which has successfully offset a EUR 1.3 million negative fulcrum effect in Italy. Furthermore, looking to our insurance revenue, we reached EUR 35.5 million for the quarter. This includes a very solid base of EUR 28.5 million in highly stable recurring revenues due to the underlying asset growth and a favorable product mix. And also as well, we benefit from EUR 7 million in insurance performance fee, mostly recorded in January and February.

Finally, our central commission income and the other revenues also showed a strong positive development, primarily driven by higher entry fees across Dubai, Switzerland, Monaco and Singapore. So overall, this picture of highly resilient and high quality of revenue generation that perfectly support our growth looking also to the following quarters.

So then moving to Slide 11, we analyze the evolution of our operating costs. Total operating costs for the first quarter amount to EUR 206 million, which represents a 15% increase year-on-year. This projection is entirely coherent with the expansion of our consolidation perimeter and the underlying growth of our business. Breaking down the main components, distribution cost increased by EUR 4 million to EUR 116 million. And this variation is directly correlated with the growth in our recurring revenues, both in Italy and abroad. And within this line item, we observed higher social security and severance payments for our Italian financial adviser, which were largely mitigated by lower provision for variable incentive and reduced marketing costs and costs related to events.

Looking to the personnel and SG&A expenses, we have an increase of EUR 20 million year-on-year to reach EUR 82 million. I would point out that EUR 19 million of this increase is entirely linked to our global business. This is primarily reflects the change in perimeters that we just mentioned for the recurring fees and are related to the United States and Brazil for an amount of EUR 40 million. On the other way around, in Italy, we have an increase of EUR 1 million, confirming our ongoing cost discipline in our domestic operation. Finally, depreciation and amortization and provision increased by EUR 2 million. This movement remains substantially linear and primarily reflects the perimeter effect that we just mentioned also for the previous line of the P&L. So in summary, our cost dynamics remain firmly under control and are directly aligned with the strategic expansion of our platform.

So now moving to Slide 12. We highlighted our operating and net profit figures that are fueled by strong organic growth and geographic diversification as our recurring EBIT rose to EUR 157 million, and this represents a 14% of increase year-on-year. Below the operating line, finance income amounted to EUR 7 million for the first quarter compared to the EUR 15 million in the same period of last year. This EUR 7 million result is primarily driven by a positive EUR 10 million contribution from our assets and portfolio performance. And this positive impact were partially offset by a negative EUR 4 million adjustment related to the fair value option and equity participation alongside a negative EUR 1 million impact from the IFRS 17.

And then looking to the tax position, we recorded a rate of 22% in the first quarter, but our guidance for the full year '26 remain at around 25%. Finally, looking at the bottom line of our reported net profit was EUR 125 million, and our recurring net profit reached EUR 128 million. This confirms a highly robust 15% expansion year-on-year.

So let's now turn to Slide 13 and talk about the net financial position. So our balance sheet remains very strong and provide a solid foundation of our strategic initiatives. So at the end of March '26, our total cash and cash equivalents stood at EUR 918 million. On the liability side, you will note our bank loan figures sits at EUR 45 million. This financial debt was coming up from the acquisition of NSI, and we are currently starting the renegotiation. There is renegotiation of this debt to secure better financing terms for the group.

Looking at our cash deployment during the first quarter, we have sold EUR 43 million in M&A and investment to support our expansion in the U.S., Brazil and Italy. We also executed EUR 16 million in share buyback, purchasing approximately 488,000 shares and an average price of EUR 33.4. These outflows were partially offset by a positive EUR 24 million related to the reimbursement of stamp duties and net of tax that we paid in advance. Importantly, this robust EUR 847 million net cash position doesn't yet include the upcoming cash dividend of EUR 2 per share that will be paid on the 20th of May.

So now moving to Slide 14. We outlined our capital structure and shareholder remuneration targets. I will not go into full detail here again as we presented this plan in March. The key message is that we remain committed to returning approximately 25% of our current market capitalization to shareholders between now and the end of '27. So as part of this commitment, the AGM has recently approved our share buyback program with cancellation of shares. This cover up to 10% of our share capital equal to about EUR 500 million at current prices. From the execution standpoint, we will conduct the share buyback in various tranches over the next 18 months, and we expect to start the first tranche after the dividend payment in May '26. But as usual, we progressively update the market regarding any buybacks that we will execute.

So let's now move to Page 15, where I give you a quick update on the TNB project. The project is firmly on track and also the TNB division is proceeding with a solid growth results. Since our last update, we have completed the remediation activities related to [ group ] capital management, which have now also been reviewed by our internal audit team. The regulator is currently conducting their customary follow-up assessment and our dialogue with them remain constant, transparent and highly constructive. This is the prerequisite step to continue receiving the necessary regulatory approval from the regulators for the overall TNB transaction. Based on the current timeline, we remain confident that the project will be completed before the end of '26. So I now let hand over to Giorgio for the conclusion.

Thank you, Alessandro. So turning to Slide 16. Let me wrap up this presentation by looking at our guidance for 2026. What is obviously a very clear robust operational performance achieved to date makes us very confident on the ability to deliver sustainable growth, and we are confirming our targets for the year. So let me remind you that under normal market conditions, we are targeting EUR 10 billion in total net inflows and a core net profit of EUR 550 million, excluding extraordinary items. Let me give a bit of a spoiler for April net new money figures that will be published early next week. And let me anticipate that we have already achieved over EUR 5 billion in net inflows to date. That means that we're already 50% way to our annual target in just 4 months.

While on the profitability side, with EUR 125 million, we have already secured what is essentially a very solid first quarter, but we are absolutely on track to deliver another year of robust and sustainable growth for our shareholders. And with that, let me thank all of you for the time today, and we will now open the floor to your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Elena Perini of Intesa Sanpaolo.

I've got 3 questions. The first one is on your recurring fees as basically the growth versus last year on a like-for-like basis was quite limited. And also compared to the fourth quarter, there was some of a drop. So I would like you to elaborate a bit more on the trend that you are expecting going forward. especially in terms of margins.

Then I would like you to ask about your TNB project. So you are saying that you are confident to finalize it by year-end. So I know that you are under regulatory review for the remediation plan. Is there any other potential obstacles that you could find in your part? Yes. And finally, I was wondering about your JV with UniCredit. UniCredit is looking for an alternative to Amundi for next year. How do you feel about this? And do you feel ready for potential replacement if it would come?

So let me take the first 2 questions. So starting from TNB that I would say is the easiest one in a way that, as you know, there is no additional point to add compared to what I already mentioned. So there are 2 stream of work between nowadays, there is one that is dealt by the fund or by FSI to, let's say, present and define and fix everything is required to get the license. And the other way around that is also important because it's part of the condition to get there is the stream that we are dealing with the Bank of Italy in terms of obtain the okay to proceed with the extraordinary transaction. So in all to where we are, as I said, we finalized the remediation plan. We completed also the internal audit review. We present and provide everything to Bank of Italy and now Bank of Italy is dealing to review and to get all the confidence to give us the okay to proceed.

So at the moment, there are no elements to be negative. On the other way around, we continue to manage the situation with them with the constant dialogue. So therefore, we just try to work in the correct way to get the results within the end of the year. Referring to the recurring revenues. So first of all, taking consideration the same perimeter, so taking out the effect of the global business evolution. So without having the contribution of the EUR 19 million coming from the new acquisition, the like-for-like comparison has to consider from the global business, EUR 9 million of growth and from the Italian business, EUR 10 million of growth. So all in all, the current business compared to last year is producing EUR 19 million more compared to last year. That means a 10% growth.

Obviously, as I also said during the presentation, we have seen an evolution compared to the last quarter that seems to be not -- it's in line with the expectation, but the key elements that we have to consider is the fact that February, so the quarter in general, if we compare the number of days that is based the calculation of the, let's say, the recurring fees generated by our fund or portfolio -- discretionary portfolio, et cetera, has to be compared with, let's say, 2 days more of the full quarter Q4. That means that we are missing in the revenues around EUR 2 million, EUR 3 million of growth. So a positive contribution, obviously. And also, we are considering -- I mean, we are impacted by a March that was a month very complicated from the situation. outside the market that impacted the AUM.

And also one point more, when you look to the growth of the group in terms of AUM, you have to, let's say, maybe exercise to allocate also the growth in terms of AUM or net new money that are coming from the strategic affiliates. Few elements -- and as you know, sorry, the strategic affiliates are not consolidated line by line. Therefore, all in all as well, there are 3 elements, I would say, to put on the table to make the right comparison of -- with the last quarter of the year. And therefore, from our, let's say, size and the numbers that we are managing on the other way around, we have -- I mean we are seeing a positive growth on the evolution of our recurring revenues. I'll let then Giorgio for the last report.

Yes. Let me tell you that we love all our clients, all our partners. Certainly, we can say nothing less when it comes to UniCredit. We see this relationship working great. I think what is very important for us is that we are delivering to UniCredit clients top performance. I guess that strengthen our relationship for the future. And we stand ready should UniCredit need any help on their strategic focus on asset management. This is what I can say. But certainly, we read the press as you do, and nothing has changed since we have seen the news regarding relationship that UniCredit has with other players in the market.

Okay. If I may, I would have a follow-up. It is a question about your private credit and private markets exposure. Just an update if you are -- if you are seeing any tensions in your exposure or everything is like you said in March?

Yes. On this one, Elena, I think we have elaborated during our last earnings call on the fact that our private credit funds have very little to do with the areas of the buckets of the market that have created some troubles elsewhere, particularly in the U.S. One aspect that is certainly very important to highlight here is that our private credit strategies are essentially focusing on asset-based finance. So we talk about private credit with the strength of a very strong collateral.

And the second of all, most of the troubles were related to the so-called evergreen fund structures, I mean, funds that promised or committed to provide liquidity to investors should investors redeem part of their investments in the funds and probably a bit of mismatch between the portfolio composition and these liquidity needs have created the issues that we have seen in the market. But none of our funds here in Italy are evergreen, in particular, when it comes to private credit, we only have one evergreen portfolio in the private credit catering to institutional clients.

But I can say that we always manage it with the liquidity buffer in line with the potential liquidity that we need to provide. So all in all, we see no issues. We have no impact on our performance, and this is related to the fact that what we do here is very different from what others do right or wrong, something that anyway doesn't really create any issues for us or our clients.

This is Alex here. Just for your question also before with regards to recurring fees and how to model them out. Actually, if you want to do it on a like-for-like basis, it's best that you would now take the Q1 numbers and what you should probably factor in is about a 1% quarter-on-quarter growth for the remainder of the year. And with this, you basically already are baking in that benign market, what we assumed so far. And then, of course, the fundraising targets, which we have given out and then may potentially update in the course of the year.

The next question is from Hubert Lam of Bank of America.

I got 3 questions. Firstly, just a follow-up on the Evergreen question that was just asked. I think, Giorgio, you mentioned that you don't have any Evergreens in Italy. But just wondering about any Evergreen funds you have in the U.S. through your various stakes and entities, any impact on them so far? That's the first question. Second question is on the regulatory review from the Bank of Italy, just wondering when we should expect them to respond to you? What's the expected timing on that? And last question around the NSI. And can you talk about integration so far and how that's coming along? And you also mentioned about launching some active ETF funds through NSI. I'm just wondering, in your view, how much you expect to raise through these new funds?

Okay. I shall respond to the first and the third question. So when it comes to our GP stakes in the U.S., we do not have any manager in the market with the Evergreen fund structure. So what I said for that is actually true also for the U.S. Hence, we see a very little risk of contagion as opposed to what is troubling others. When it comes to NSI, yes, we said very, very successful integration of NSI into our platform. Let me tell you, I mean, we don't provide net new money figures by a single business. We actually consolidate everything into a geographic sort of aggregate, but NSI today is contributing approximately $200 million to $300 million of net new money. This is actually something even better than we expected considering our initial projections.

Certainly, every month is different from the other, but things are going great. We had a bit of integration cost at the beginning, hence, a bit of impact on the profitability. The launch of this active ETFs on July 1 certainly will mark an important meaningful development even for Azimut as we have never been really active in this space. It's a great way for Azimut to enter the U.S. market with our global investment management capabilities. We already registered with our sales force strong market interest. ETFs will be available -- will be made available, sorry, to a very large audience of RIAs, private banks, commercial banks, broker-dealers. We are talking about more than 6,000 distributors and wholesalers.

We tend to be always very, very conservative when it comes to this thing. So we are projecting by the end of the year, net new money into the ETFs into the range of between $200 million to $300 million. But certainly, we are undershooting here on what is the real potential. In particular, active ETFs have become a very hot topic in the U.S. in light of the very appealing tax treatment that the instrument has vis-a-vis mutual funds. Last year alone, there have been more than 7,000 active ETFs launched in the U.S. market against only 50 mutual funds being launched during the same period.

And the fact that we are entering the market with these global strategies, what the Americas call international markets focused portfolios. I think right now, looking at what's happening in the world, looking at investors' preferences in the U.S., people seeking diversification even when it comes to currency, I think this is a great opportunity where we see, honestly, little competition from the incumbents, certainly stronger, better known for what they can deliver when it comes to the U.S. markets. But when it comes to global strategies, I think we have a bit of potential here courtesy of our agility and always think different and disruptively as opposed to what the others do.

So we are very confident, as I said, NSI was a transformational deal for Azimut in the U.S., and we see this as a very meaningful engine of growth for assets and profits for the short, medium and long term.

And taking the second question related to Bank of Italy and TNB. I mean, unfortunately, the time is an element that we do not control. From a regulatory point of view, there is no, let's say, kind of a number of days within they have to answer. Therefore, what we know that we have no to do, let's say, the wrong way to approach to them to make them pressure. So therefore, we are keeping them, as I mentioned before, obviously updated on everything and keeping also the good dialogue that we built over the last few months. So we are just waiting, I would say. But on the other way around, we are keeping the dialogue open.

The next question is from Ian White of Autonomous Research.

Just a couple from my side, please. I guess just around the sort of delays we've had on TNB. Can I just understand whether that's causing any other sort of frictions or challenging conversations internally? I'm thinking about things like advisers becoming restless, unusual attrition, anything like that just because I know that your advisers wanting to raise deposits was one of the reasons that you explored this in the first place. So that's my main question, please. And just secondly, is there any particular reason that you're stopping short of increasing the net inflow guidance at this stage? Is that just caution? Is there a specific reason that this run rate might not be sustained over the next 8 months?

So we take both questions. So let me tell you, first of all, on the impact from what's happening in terms of engagement and constructive dialogue with the authorities, the regulators vis-a-vis our Italian advisers. I mean, Azimut has been operating as a nonbanking financial institutions for 36 years. So it's not a couple of months changing the way advisers are in the market. And you see the results in terms of net new money, people that are still very effective, very strong. Our business at the end of the day is based on very strong personal and business relationships. Certainly, we would have all loved to have the TNB transaction being closed by now for a number of good reasons that there's no need for me to elaborate on, but that is not impacting the determination and the commitment by advisers to keep delivering performance and service to clients.

So we see no impact and we see no stress, as I said. In a way, it's business as usual. We are waiting and working hard to make things happen, and we remain confident that will happen within the timeline that we have been extensively commenting on until now.

And then when it comes to net new money, so let me take this question with a light answer, but it tells you a lot. We have a tradition of overshooting our net new money targets, and we have always a tradition of upgrading our net new money by H1 results. So let's see whether we can keep the tradition of changing our forecast in July when we report on our H1 results.

What we see right now is absolutely giving us all the confidence that we can keep delivering. But we won't sort of do anything different that will sort of make us look too -- I mean, rushing in changing things. As I said, let's be a bit more patient for another couple of months. But as far as we can see, this might be another year where we will deliver better than we expected at the beginning of the year.

The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM.

I have a couple. One, maybe I missed it, but it's a busy day. Did you give any anticipation about the April net inflows trends? That would be helpful. And second is on Slide 14. I see that on top of the committed equity at the end of 2025, you also had another EUR 300 million in the coming 18 months and a fair portion of it would be potentially dedicated to M&A. So I was wondering if you can give us a sense of what might be of interest for Azimut in the M&A space. It's a fair significant amount of money that could be invested. So would be interesting to get your view on that. And on the first tranche of the buyback, can you quantify what would be the amount that will start after the payment of the dividend?

Okay, Alberto, you must have been very, very busy because we made a very clear comment on April net new money at the end of the presentation. So we will update, obviously, with the official figures early next week. But we can say right now that figures are pretty strong, and that would make us certainly close the first 4 months with cumulative net new money above EUR 5 billion. So let me tell you that, that was the result of strong commercial performance, both in Italy and across our global operations. When it comes to committed equity and how much of that is earmarked for M&A, look, I think here, what we want to convey to you is an approach when it comes to balance sheet and, let's say, financial management.

Historically, we have been sort of favoring M&A as opposed to the remuneration when it was coming to making that decision of managing capital. What we have been saying now loud and clear over the last year is that we're going to approach this topic with a balanced approach, both growth and shareholder remuneration are equally important. As in what is a growth company, we will never retreat from a mission of growing the business, even if that is nonorganic, yet, we want to have a balance sheet run efficiently and our capital management strategy that we announced now a few months back, I think, is a testament to this commitment to manage and to return capital to shareholders in multiple ways.

Should there be any major M&A, I think we will keep the same balanced approach, and we will make recourse to third-party financing in the form of debt. and that we certainly prove an approach remaining consistent and certainly aiming at what is a disciplined management of our balance sheet, where discipline means also taking care of the efficiency. So an optimal leverage structure that allows everyone, but shareholders in particular, to enjoy both earnings growth and capital return. When it comes to the share buyback and how we will be in the market forming the dividend, I'll let Alessandro to comment on that.

Well, we are obviously looking to define a partner to proceed with this process. It's going to probably split it in 2 tranches. The 2 means between 6 and 9 months of the -- for the single tranche, so 250 and 250 and up to me, that's something very linear in terms of approach.

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered. I'd like to hand it back to you for any closing remarks.

Excellent. So we thank everyone for attending this call and look forward to seeing you all soon. Thank you.

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Azimut Group Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Giorgio Medda, CEO of Azimut. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Azimut Full Year 2025 results presentation. I'm Giorgio Medda, CEO of the group, and I'm pleased to be here with Alessandro Zambotti, CEO and Group CFO; and Alex Soppera, Head of Investor Relations.

So this past year has been a truly defining one for Azimut and likewise, a very exciting one. As you know, it was a year marked by change in leadership, yet our growth not only continued, but actually accelerated. The defining step in our growth journey reflects both the strength of our business model and the dedication of our people across all our markets. So let's dive right into the presentation and move to Slide 3, please.

So the year 2025 continued to be one where we executed a deliberate results, and we closed by achieving a record EUR 32 billion in net inflows and a net profit of EUR 526 million, both above the Street expectations. Most notably, our recurring net profit grew by an impressive 20%. That is a best-in-class result. During the year, we also anticipated some key guidelines for our Elevate 2030 strategic plan. This plan will drive the next stage of growth for Azimut, defining an even more ambitious trajectory that we showcase the full potential of our diversified global platform and reinforce our position as a leading global independent player.

Beyond these exceptional operating numbers, we are thrilled to discuss our concrete commitment to creating shareholder value, including a proposed raised dividend of EUR 2 per share and a strategic capital allocation framework that aims to return roughly 25% of our current market cap over the next 18 months through dividends and share buybacks.

Finally, while the process has taken longer than we originally envisaged, we continue to make progress on the TNB transaction. And let me tell you that this represents a transformational step for the group that will unlock significant value and, certainly Alessandro will discuss it more in detail later during the presentation.

We are moving full steam ahead, carrying the strong momentum into our 2026 targets and the execution of our Elevate 2030 strategic plan. And with that, let us please move to Page 4, where we can look at the key financial and operating highlights for the full year. First of all, total assets reached an impressive EUR 145 billion at the end of January '26, marking an excess of 30% increase per year in terms of assets, a new absolute record for the group. This was fueled by a spectacular EUR 32 billion in net inflows during 2025, which represents the strongest annual performance in our company's history.

More importantly, 66% of these flows came from our global operations. This clearly demonstrates how the continued expansion of our international platform is successfully driving growth beyond our core markets in Italy, which remains strong and continues to be the foundation of our success.

Furthermore, looking at our current trading for 2026, we are off to a very strong start and continue to see excellent momentum across the board. On the financial side, at a very high level, revenues reached EUR 1.4 billion, supported by a solid 9% increase in recurring revenues, and that confirms the high quality and resilience of our business mix, while the operating profit stood at EUR 649 million with our recurring EBIT also up 9% year-over-year.

Group net profit reached EUR 526 million, and the recurring net profit grew by a very strong 20% compared to last year. This reflects the steady expansion and scalability of our core business. Finally, let me highlight that net profit from our global operations reached EUR 101 million, which now represents 19% of our total net profit. This consistent growth across our regions confirms the effectiveness of our international strategy. And these figures, let me tell you, put us in a highly robust position to continue executing our long-term growth agenda and creating tangible value for our shareholders.

Now turning to Slide 5. We want to put our exceptional performance into a clear perspective. And these numbers, I think, speak volumes. Our recurring net profit growth of 20% is not just strong. It completely dominates the sector when compared to our Italian peers. And the difference is quite striking. While our competitors reported profit growth ranging from negative 1% to a maximum of 11%, Azimut delivered a robust 20% increase.

This significant outperformance directly reflects the resilience and high scalability of our diversified global model and a factor that, in our view, is not fully appreciated by the market.

Moving to slide 6, we look at the as we normally do at the bridge between our 2024 and 2025 net profits. As I mentioned earlier, the group net profit reached EUR 526 million compared to EUR 568 million last year. However, as this chart clearly illustrates, the difference main reflects lower performance fees and capital gains below the operating profit line, while recurring profitability continued to grow strongly.

Finally, under other items below EBIT, we see a negative variance of EUR 57 million and it's important to note that the 2024 baseline was significantly elevated by the capital gain from the sale of our stake in Kennedy Lewis. While in 2025, this block includes some non-recurring write-offs onto investments reflecting conservative valuation assumptions, which were partially offset by the growth of Nova, lower taxes, including a one-off tax refund and gains on our own investments.

Because of this moving part below the operating line, the truest measure of our success is highlighted in the lighter blue columns, and the already mentioned 20% recurring net profit growth to a phenomenal EUR 479 million.

Now, let us turn to slide 7 and 8, where we look at the economics behind our different business lines and regions. Because the underlying drivers of our business remain highly consistent with what we presented during our 9-month update, I will keep this section very brief. On slide 7, looking at our business line, you can see that Integrated Solutions continues to act as a powerhouse for the group. This core vertical commands superior stable recurring margins of 70 basis points. And at the same time, Global Wealth and our Institution and also divisions are experiencing strong commercial momentum and have become incredibly robust contributors to our net profit, making up about 20% of the overall net profit.

And let me tell you that our strategic affiliates remain in a very active phase of growth and consolidation, with investments ramping up as planned to expand their platforms. Moving to Slide 8 and zooming in by region, the results really confirm the strength and diversification of our global strategy, with Italy that continue to show exceptionally robust earnings, maintaining obviously a stable operating development even when factoring in lower performance fees and some TNB-related costs.

And obviously, globally, we are, you know, our underlying profitability is accelerating thanks to asset growth and strong operating leverage with a very strong and impressive momentum in the Americas, driven by the U.S. and Brazil. And when you look at the contribution of the global business, I mean, this is summing up to a very healthy recurring net profit margin of 41 basis points.

Now moving to the next few slides, we are incredibly excited to share a new level of detail and transparency with all of you today. For the first time, we are providing a deeper look under the hoods of our key business verticals to truly showcase the underlying power of our platform. Let us start with Slide 9 and look at Integrated Solutions, which represent the DNA of the firm and remains a massive growth engine for the group.

This core vertical is built on a powerful vertically integrated business model that combines our proprietary product factories with our exceptional network of top-tier financial advisors. This is what's made Azimut succeed in Italy out of a very pioneering business model. Today we have been able to say that we successfully exported the same model to key high growth markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Taiwan.

Here, we are disclosing the average assets per advisors across our key countries. And as you can clearly see, our network is highly productive. In Italy, excluding the TNB perimeter, average assets per advisors stand at a very strong EUR 29 million. However, when you look at the global figures, I mean, these are even more striking. In Brazil, average assets per advisor reach EUR 32 million.

And in Turkey, pretty impressive results of EUR 66 million per advisor. This proves that our model of combining proprietary product factories with top-tier financial advisors is highly scalable and remarkably effective across different global jurisdictions.

Turning to slide 10, we want to spotlight our Global Wealth Solutions division and the productivity that we are seeing across our key international hubs. To give a brief overview of this business, Global Wealth Solutions connects our extensive network to deliver exceptional investment ideas and products worldwide, where we offer a true multi-asset proposition across both public and private markets, all supported by a unified custody set up with the world's leading banks.

Our solutions range goes from personalized advisory and discretionary portfolio management services to highly customizable, actively managed certificates and bespoke structured products as we aim to cater to high-net-worth to ultra-net-worth individuals, families, and institutions around the world. In Monaco, for example, we combine a bespoke private banking heritage with sophisticated asset management solutions. In Switzerland, we leverage a unique local model to serve our clients. And our U.S.-based Azimut Investment advisers provide neutral client-focused advisory portfolio consolidation for both domestic and Latin American investors. And in Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong, we act as a premier global partner for individuals and institutions.

A major competitive advantage for our high net worth clients is our capability to facilitate offshore investing as we leverage our Luxembourg idea factory as a central hub for product generation, as we provide a unified financial services offering with multi-booking capabilities across different jurisdictions. Our regional figures are truly exceptional. In the United States, our relationship managers oversee an average of $260 million individually. Monaco and Switzerland are also highly productive, managing $140 million and $138 million per adviser respectively. Also we are seeing fantastic scale in the UAE, Singapore and Hong Kong that are coming up and showing very high growth rate.

The average book of business relationship manager globally has increased by a solid 8% year-over-year, reaching an impressive $104 million. And we grew our team with 12 new additions throughout the year. That obviously proves that as we expand our footprint and grow our team of relationship managers, we are just not adding headcount, but also productivity.

When you look at slide 11, you see how our total assets for this division, for this distribution line reached $9.4 billion by the end of 2025. And You know, $1.3 billion was essentially addition during the year, the result of organic business development that is a very robust 18% growth rate, and we see this accelerating as we have started the year in a great fashion.

We continue to attract new assets and scale our overall book of business, cross-selling our high-quality proprietary solutions to these existing portfolios, and we are incredibly excited for what, you know, lies ahead for us in the future. And finally, on slide 12, we detail our institutional and wholesale division. This segment has grown into a globally diversified platform, with now more than EUR 41 billion in total assets. And you know, the mix is exceptionally well-balanced, with 42% institutional clients and 58% wholesale.

We wanted also to provide here more details about the institutional business by region to give more color about our activities that go beyond our domestic market. And certainly to note here is the weight and the significance of our U.S. business from a regional standpoint, and that is the result of certainly the consolidation of the recently acquired North Square Investments.

And then turning to slide 13, we want to highlight a selection of our most significant client wins. I'm not gonna go through every single win, although each one is certainly a big testament to our ability to perform and to have now the credentials to grow beyond our home market, but you can see here that certainly we display the power of a very well-diversified product factory across both public and private markets.

Now turning to slide 14, I think, you know, this is the best slide to perfectly translate everything that we just discussed in terms of our global platform into tangible bottom-line numbers. Historically, some market observers have been very skeptical about the true profitability and value of our international expansion, certainly over the last decade, where we have been very focused and committed to grow the business. But finally, we can see that these are very exceptional data that, you know, prove, in my view, in a very sort of indisputable way that those skeptics were very, very wrong.

Over the years, we have strategically deployed approximately EUR 660 million in net M&A investments to build our international footprint. Today, this platform accounts more than EUR 73 billion of total assets and generates more than EUR 100 million of net profit. That itself translates on a 15% return on investment. That, you know, compared to any cost of capital you can estimate for the business, we believe our cost of capital is 10%, proves a very meaningful and sizable value creation that we see expanding in the short and long term.

And as I said, it clearly demonstrates what has been the effectiveness of our capital allocation strategy. In slide 15 is just a very quick but powerful reminder of our ambitions through the Elevate 2030 targets that we already published in November. And just make one point very clear, our growth story is far from over, and our fundraising efforts of EUR 5 billion to EUR 8 billion a year will lead to effectively double our average total asset.

It translates into a remarkable EUR 180 to million-EUR 280 million in net profits generated strictly from our global operation by the end of this decade. In the following slide, we just summarize what are the different product initiatives, you know, driving growth in the short term across public markets, our Luxembourg mutual fund range, our financial planning franchise with our life insurance solutions.

Certainly here, we have been moving very, very aggressively when it comes to the launch of a brand-new product such as active ETFs in the U.S. market courtesy of the distribution reach of NSI. And the strong push that we are making for our Global Wealth Solutions business around the world. And then let me touch very briefly upon something that has been very, say important topic of interest in the market over the last few weeks, the state of, private credit and private markets in general, aside from the news flow that we see particularly overseas. I wanna just give a brief update on our 2026 product pipeline when it comes to private markets. First of all, we are in the market now with a significant number of funds that are currently raising a commitment. Overall, we have a target over the next 12 to 18 months for EUR 2.1 billion of commitment to be raised for a very wide range of strategies.

As I mentioned, we already covered almost, you know, 30% of this target. But what is important to appreciate from slide 17 is the diversified offering that we have, certainly diversified in terms of investment verticals, and likewise in terms of geographies now with Europe, U.S., Latin America and Turkey, you know, showcasing a very strong product development activity in this respect.

In page 18, we show where is for our Italian business, the exposure of our retail clients to illiquid strategies. Here what is remarkable is essentially, there are two things that actually they are probably noteworthy. The first one is that we started talking to our clients and, you know, explaining the merits of diversification across liquid assets well before many of our competitors did. Actually, this is an exercise that started 6 years ago in 2019. Today, we have achieved an exposure of almost 9%. That is remarkable in absolute. Certainly is the, you know, proof of the very hard work that we put and the trust of our clients into this investment diversification effort, but also proves how we are ahead looking at our global competition.

We are using here data coming from a McKinsey report. But what is striking is that we have an average exposure that is 4x larger than what you have globally. And even when you look at the long-term target, there is a target forecasted and projected by McKinsey of 10% exposure of retail to private market investments, but we keep our long-term target of actually achieving 15% to 20%. And this can only be done with, as I mentioned, diversification. We have read a lot of things over the last couple of weeks, as I mentioned. What we want to show in slide 19 is the approach that we have, particularly when it comes to our Italian franchise.

And here is just a deep dive into a subset of our Italian private market strategies that amounted to approximately EUR 5.5 billion overall. Here we are focusing on 3.1, and we are only focusing on private equity and direct lending strategies. And what we want to show here is the very high level of diversification, both in terms of assets and sectors, essentially reducing any geographic risk that comes from very large exposure to a single sector or to a very concentrated portfolio of investments.

And in slide 20, and I think that is the most important of all these slides, you know, highlighting our success across private markets is, you know, the result, the performance that we are generating. There are a lot of figures in this slide, but let me focus on a few metrics. First of all, you see here what we have raised across the different verticals. Obviously, we are looking at different asset classes in a way. And let's look at some performance metrics such as total value to paying investments. That is a measure of the performance as it is accounted in our NAVs.

Let me tell you that the NAV calculation rules are pretty tough in Europe, and we are not really allowed to assume or to take any sort of mark to market beyond what is really proven by the actual accounting of the businesses and what has been achieved.

So these are very reflective measures of performance embedded into the funds and obviously when we come to these portfolios, we come to, you know, realization of the value out of exits, we will be able to distribute reasonably higher performance to our investors. Let's see, what is the average vintage of all these strategies, and certainly compare also to our, you know, to the benchmark. These are very remarkable, they say proof of our ability to generate even over a short period of time, value out of illiquid portfolios.

And then last but not least, I mean, certainly, meaningful when you look at the news flow that I mentioned just now, what is the ratio of distributions to our investors that in certain instances for private equity, private debt and a number of club deals has achieved almost, you know, between 15% and 20% of capital being returned to our investors. That is certainly considered a very average young vintage, a very important element appreciated by clients who have started familiarizing with this illiquid investments only recently.

I will now turn to Alessandro for a detailed review of our financials for 2025.

Yeah. Thank you, Giorgio, and good afternoon to everyone. Moving to slide 21, let us take a step back and look of the fantastic track record that we have built over the past 7 years. Since 2019, we have expanded our footprint and compounded our growth, driving our total asset to continuous new all-time high and growing at a remarkable 16% CAGR to about EUR 145 billion as of today.

So over this time, over this same period, we captured EUR 94 billion in cumulative net inflows with an highly strategic EUR 10 billion flowing directly into private market. And our success goes hand-in-hand with the success of our clients as we generated a net performance for clients of about 28% after cost. And for our shareholders, the numbers are also speaking for themselves. The group generated EUR 3 billion in net profit, distributing EUR 1.3 billion to shareholder, including the actual this year proposed dividend of EUR 2, and fully repaid close to EUR 1 billion in debt and transforming to cash position of over EUR 800 million.

So these are important numbers and are a direct reflection of our discipline, execution and the structural resilience of the entire Azimut Group. So then turning to slide 22, we want to highlight the exceptional quality of the revenues that are driving these record results. I mean, historically, some market observers question our reliance on performance fees, that this slide definitely demonstrates we have completely transformed our earnings profile.

It's a clear strategic choice that has led us to have a P&L driven mainly by highly stable recurring revenue. And today, only a small fraction of our revenue base remains exposed to variability. With about 95% of our total revenue now coming from this stable income stream, and we have built a robust engine that delivers a highly predictable value year after year.

So now moving to slide 23, we once again review our ability to generate value and recurring profit, confirming for 2025 the solidity of the recurring net profit margin. But above all, as you can clearly see from the chart, 2025 marks a new all-time high in the history of our firm. We deliver an outstanding EUR 479 million in recurring net profit, constantly growing year after year.

And to put this, I mean, this into perspective, this figure is more than two and a half times larger than in 2019.

Let's now also go into the details as we always do, in particular on slide 24, where we have the revenue breakdown. The revenue grow by a solid EUR 71 million thanks to the continuous growth of the recurring revenues, which offset the lower contribution from variable fees from both the open-ended and the insurance funds. Looking more closely to the components, so at the level of the recurring fees increased by EUR 82 million year-over-year. This was supported by the continuous expansion of global business. EUR 42 million is coming from our international business and mainly driven by the contribution from U.S., U.A.E., Brazil, Singapore and Monaco.

In Italy, we deliver broad-based growth across all business lines, spanning mutual funds, alternative investment, pension funds, and also our Nova partnership is becoming more significant. Regarding also performance fees, we recorded a year-over-year decrease of EUR 17 million. However it is important to highlight the EUR 24 million positive global momentum, driven by Brazil, Turkey, Monaco, and Switzerland.

In Italy, we sustain strong alpha in our domestic discretionary portfolio management, which help us to offset a negative fulcrum effect. Finally, looking at the insurance revenue, while the total was down at EUR 11 million compared to last year, the underlying quality of this revenue stream improved. We achieved a 5% increase, representing EUR 5 million in recurring insurance revenue due to the solid growth and the optimization of our product mix.

The overall decrease was entirely driven by a EUR 60 million drop in the insurance performance fees, reflecting a softer, first half performance compared to the exceptionality, coming from the strong figures we saw in 2024. No less important, I mean, when looking to the first two months of 2026, we are off to a solid start. At the level of the other revenues increased by EUR 70 million, compared to last year, mainly driven by structuring fees related to our growing Brazilian private infrastructure business that we already commented for the previous quarter. So then we are back to, let's say, to a normal evolution of the, I mean, of this line.

On the next slide, we analyze the cost, where we note an increase of EUR 55 million in total. Here, we try to give you so some more detail as well. At the level of the distribution cost, we have an increase of EUR 29 million compared to last year. This is partially explained by the direct correlation with recurring revenue growth in Italy and abroad, particularly in the areas of Singapore and Monaco. And it also reflects the higher provision for variable incentive to Italian FA, alongside the strategic marketing and TNB related costs that we already mentioned during the year 2025.

Moving to personnel and SG&A, we recorded a EUR 25 million increase. This is primarily a perimeter effect driven by our successful M&A activities, and in particular I'm referring to Kennedy Capital and HighPost, while domestically we maintain cost discipline. A few words on the fourth quarter increase. This is strictly tied to performance linked compensation that align with the strong alpha and that our team and portfolio manager deliver.

D&A and provision, I would define it as broadly flat. And in general, it is always important to emphasize that acquisition costs are mainly driven by the Italian business. You see about 90% contribution, while the administrative costs are split 60/40 between Italy and the international business. We close with the next slide, which instead tries to detail the results below our EBIT. First, thanks to the geographical diversification of the group, recurring EBIT grew by 9% to EUR 578 million.

Moving below the operating line, finance income amounts to EUR 41 million for the year.

This was primarily driven by a positive EUR 37 million contribution from our own investment and related portfolio performance, along with EUR 8 million in net interest earned, and another EUR 8 million in dividends from our GP stakes and strategic affiliates. It is worth noting that this line item was impacted during the quarter by EUR 25 million, non-recurring, write-off on specific investments. We are talking about VC proprietary investment. And achieving, I would say, looking also to the fantastic results, an extremely conservative approach, we define it as a better and conservative approach to make more, you know, confident on the future numbers of the group.

Regarding our tax position, we're recording an adjusted tax rate of 21.5% for 2025 and excluding our EUR 27 million of one-off tax refund related to the infra-group foreign dividends. Looking ahead, we are guiding for a normalized tax rate of approximately 25% for the full year 2026. And then ultimately, this brings us to the bottom line and the recurring net profit of EUR 479 million as already mentioned, with an impressive 20% compared to last year.

Moving to the slide 27. Here we have, as usual, our net financial position. Today, the group has no debt and the net financial position is, it's around EUR 813 million, with an increase compared to the previous year. The change of, I mean, the increase of EUR 63 million compared to last year is mainly due to the contribution, obviously, of the net profit before tax. So I'm referring to the EUR 673 million, then we have the contribution, the positive contribution coming from our proceeds from our disinvestment in Australia and the exit of RoundShield that is contributing EUR 121 million.

And then let's say we have an observation of cash coming from the M&A for EUR 60 million, advanced taxes for EUR 275 million, dividend for EUR 323 million, and buyback of EUR 62 million. So this should reconcile the variation compared to previous year.

Moving to slide 28. We highlighted our continual commitment to delivering substantial tangible returns to our shareholders based on our record recurring profitability and our highly resilient cash generation. The Board of Directors is proudly to propose a dividend of EUR 2 per share with an increase of 15% compared to the previous year and dividend yield of approximately 6%. This proposed dividend perfectly aligned with our stated capital return strategy that we will elaborate into more detail shortly.

Moving to slide 29. We want to detail our capital return strategy, which reflects our concrete commitment to create value for our shareholders. So as you can see from the headline, we are targeting an optimal capital structure to allow us to distribute approximately EUR 1.3 billion in cash over the next 18 months.

To put this into perspective, this represents roughly 25% of our current capitalization. Looking at the bridge chart, this plan is fully supported by our strong financial position. We start with EUR 379 million in distributable cash and EUR 434 million in committed equity at the end of 2025.

A significant portion of this commitment is tied to our expansion in the United States, most notably our acquisition of NSI. And as you may recall, this strategic transaction involves a minimum purchase price of $110 million, which will be paid through a combination of cash and Azimut shares.

Furthermore, this commitment equity covers our recent transaction in Brazil and includes provisions for future potential turnout, commitment, and options to increase our shares in transaction done across our global platform. We have set aside approximately 30% to cover our operating cash and net working capital needs. And then there is another 15% specifically reserved to meet our global regulatory capital requirements.

Finally, the remaining 10% is deployed into our proprietary investment, as are referring to open-ended fund are included in the net financial position and are directly support our product generation and co-investment strategies and provide potentials for outside returns, such as the one we achieved with Kennedy Lewis in 2024.

Looking ahead over full year, I mean, the year 2026 and 2027, we expect to generate approximately EUR 650 million in free cash flow available for distribution. And along with roughly EUR 250 million in proceeds from our strategic disinvestment, most notably the upfront cash from TNB transaction. This is basically give us about EUR 1.3 billion, as I mentioned at the beginning, to return to our shareholders. We plan to execute this return through two main channels. First, a share buyback program of up to EUR 500 million, which includes the full cancellation of the repurchase shares. Second, the distribution of between EUR 715 million and EUR 800 million in dividends during 2026 and 2027.

To conclude on this slide, we want to reiterate that our capital return strategy is the ultimate testament to our ongoing value creation. With the comprehensive plan we have laid out today, we are decisively addressing and resolving any doubt regarding our use of cash and our capital allocation policies.

So moving to slide 30, for a quick update on TNB project. The project is ongoing and the TNB division, with the support of the FSI, the fund is proceeding with a good growth result. Robust numbers for total asset growth, which at the end of January already exceed EUR 29 billion. Also at the level of the revenues and the net profit, they are continuing to expand.

Although the net profit is penalized by directly affiliated marketing and project costs, that is as well mentioned at the beginning when we comment our evolution of the administrative costs. Regarding the transaction timeline, as you know, we are extending the agreement with FSI substantially until the end of the year, and we continue to work together on the IT separation and all the operational setup necessary to complete our migration and, you know, to conclude our important project.

Finally, I want to provide a brief update regarding the Bank of Italy remediation plan of Azimut Capital Management. At the end of February, we successfully concluded the remediation activities. This has been completed also maintaining a constant alignment with the regulator. We are now entering the final phase, which involves the internal audit verification of all the implementation related to the remediation plan.

This internal verification will conclude, we expect to conclude it at the end of March. So then concluding this phase, we expect then the regulator will formally validate the outcome. This keeps us fully on track on the officially complete the action plan by our target that was defined with the regulator at the end of April 2026. But as well as I mentioned, we are achieving it 1 month before. This we know that is 1 of the prerequisite steps to receiving the necessary regulatory approvals from the regulators for the overall TNB transaction. So we are confident that we will have conclude this project before the end of the year.

With this, I hand over to Giorgio, thank you.

Thank you, Alessandro. So turning to the last slide, Slide 31. I'd like to conclude today's presentation by looking at our guidance for 2026. We are building on a fantastic commercial momentum that we have generated across our global platform. And we can only confirm our targets for the year that I remind you are as follows: under normal market conditions, we are targeting EUR 10 billion in total net inflows and a core net profit of EUR 550 million, excluding extraordinary items.

I mentioned at the beginning of the call, we are already off to a very strong start. And as you can see on this slide, based on the preliminary February figures in just the first 2 months of the year, we have already achieved over EUR 3 billion in net inflows. And at the beginning of next week, we will provide a more detailed review of how we got there. This early momentum gives us a very solid foundation and the confidence in our ability to deliver another year of robust and profitable growth.

So to sum it up, our platform is accelerating also in 2026, -- our growth path is clearly defined, and we remain entirely focused on executing our strategy, creating outstanding value for you, our shareholders. So thank you all for your time today, and we remain very excited about the future of Azimut, and we will now open the floor to your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] First question is from Gian Luca Ferrari, Mediobanca.

Three for me. I would start with TNB. I understood that the first part of the process has almost been completed. I was wondering more on the second part of the process. Will be you guys in charge of it or FSI will step in and will, let's say, discuss with the regulators about the final approval of the project. The second is -- and the third actually are both on Page 29 on the new capital management policy, a couple of clarifications. The first one is the EUR 250 million proceeds divestments -- is this related to the first part of the upfront of TNB that if I recall correctly, was EUR 240 million.

Are you referring to the distribution of that part of the cash you should receive? And secondly, going forward, after 2027, how should we think about this new capital management policy? Are you going to provide us with a dividend payout on the cash flows you generate plus are you still -- will you still go for a sizable big buyback program with cancellation or you will shift to annual buyback programs? And if you elaborate a bit on what will be over time the approach?

So I'm going to take the first 2, and then Giorgio will elaborate on the third one. So in relation to TNB and the other way around, we are running, let's say, both sides in the discussion with the regulator because, as you said, at the level of total capital management, we are running the remediation. And as I mentioned, we finalized the remediation at the end of February. And this is our main focus as Azimut, obviously. On the other way around, the fund, so FSI is dealing with the other division, I would say, of Bank of Italy responsible of the authorization or at least the preliminary presentation before it goes to the European Central Bank.

So we are splitting the activity in 2 parts. And obviously, the fund is the main reference for Bank of Italy to finalize the regulatory process of the authorization on their side. For the EUR 250 million, it's like surrounding amount linked to the EUR 247 million of proceeds. So I'm absolutely referring to TNB just with the rounding to make the numbers easy to read it.

So Gian Luca, let me pick up your third question. Obviously, we are providing here visibility until the end of 2027, that is more than 18 months from now. And let me tell you that you can certainly tell how something will go by how it begins. So obviously, we set the tone for the next 18 months and the future, we will certainly stick to a principle of optimal capital structure.

The reason why we are not saying anything more than what we are saying today, although it's pretty substantial, is that we still have the TNB transaction that is pending, and we would like to have any shareholder remuneration policy or capital allocation strategy to be elaborated within a very clear set of financial objectives for the group for the next 4 to 5 years.

We have already, I think, covered a long distance over the last 6 months, pending the uncertainties related to TNB. But today, you see our capital allocation strategy, the way it defined as a very strong commitment to create value through as we called it an optimal capital structure.

Next question is from Alberto Villa, Intermonte SIM.

I have 3. One is back on Slide 14, where you show more details about the international business and you give us more details, and that's obviously very helpful. Can you maybe give us also an indication of revenues and operating costs related to this business in 2025 to have some more details there?

And the second question is on the private markets. Thanks here again for giving us more visibility. At the same time, maybe you can elaborate a little bit on the amount of funds that will start to mature in the next, let's say, 2, 3 years and how it works if there are sort of grace periods or anything that can eventually accommodate any situation in which you -- the fund need more time or anything that could give more, let's say, details on that would be helpful.

And finally, on one line item in the P&L, the financial income going forward, how should we look at it? Because maybe that's fueled by the investment of the liquidity you have in your balance sheet. So given that you are going to distribute, that's nice. But maybe -- is that fair to assume that financial income will be probably less supportive on the P&L side in the future?

Okay, Alberto, I'll take the first 2 questions. Regarding the breakdown of our, let's say, P&L by region or business line, I would encourage you to look at our Slide 7 and 8. I mean, I think we tried to summarize what are the key underlying drivers of our business at all levels, revenues, cost and certainly margins. Also with this presentation, we are providing a look-through in terms of KPIs such as advisers or assets under management by single distribution lines.

I wouldn't probably bore you now with all the details. And certainly, we are available for a follow-up call to discuss more what has been driving the business country by country or business line by business line. But in general, the business has been growing, average assets per adviser increasing scale effect across businesses and now have become pretty sizable, and we are able to extract operating leverage benefits. And you see that in terms of margins on assets or margins on revenues.

As far as the private markets business is concerned, let me tell you something. Funny enough, we were the very first to start promoting private markets investments with individual or private clients -- but we have really been very cautious when it comes to offering evergreen funds to the same clients. I think the market has been inundated by what I call effectively an evergreen washing in the offering of these products.

People really try to entice clients with providing them the dream of liquidity when actually there's no liquidity in the underlying portfolios. If that liquidity is sort of possible, maybe it comes at the expense of lower returns because obviously, funds they need to retain a meaningful cash buffer to honor the call for redemptions.

We have really started probably with the most complicated part with our clients, explaining them the merits of diversifying across illiquid strategy, the possibility to enjoy what is the so-called illiquidity premium, patient capitals and within a diversified portfolio, certainly seeing how to create, let's say, a segmentation or diversification of the portfolio using different time horizons.

On that basis, we have not relied on evergreen funds. And I can tell you, considering what is our average vintage that we would expect the first liquidations of the funds that we have launched over the last few years to start in '28, '29. And our clients, they are waiting for '28, '29 to get their money back and portfolios have been built with that specific purpose. So we are not planning and we do not see any need whatsoever to ring-fence or to gate or to sort of promote continuation funds because things are being done the proper way.

Well, referring to your point on finance income, I mean, it's obviously, let's say, to take the point, considering, first of all, let's say, the different contributors on this finance income line. As I mentioned during the details of the evolution for referring to this year, we were talking about portfolio performance.

We were talking about net interest turn, dividend from GP stakes. So there is a mix of things that they are contributing below EBIT. Obviously, compared it to last year where there was the benefit and the positive gain on Kennedy Lewis, we cannot compare the 2 here in a, let's say, fair like-for-like way.

But at the same time, over the last 3 years, I would say that the finance income line is contributing on our net profit. Therefore, I would expect also for the next year to be at least in line with our EUR 40 million, but probably even more due to the fact that also there, we have the contribution of our partnerships our equity participation that are generating dividends. So again, a mix of things that make us confident to maintain a nice level of contribution on this line.

If I can follow-up question on the net inflows target. You started very well the year. Of course, as you did in the past, maybe you will adjust the estimate later on during the year. Is there any particular flavor you can give us in terms of what is happening in terms of contribution? Any area of particularly strong indications coming from the net inflows of the early months of the year?

No, Alberto, we can tell you that it's a very balanced contribution from all the business lines, all the geographies. When you look at 2025, the global business was accounting for 66% of total net inflows, certainly and sign the U.S. took the lion's share for that. This year, we start 50-50 kind of balanced. And I think we are firing on all cylinders consistently across all the business lines and geographies. I mean, I think this is the beauty of the platform today. We see, particularly when it comes to emerging markets, what I call a synchronized growth, something that has not been always the case in the previous years where it can happen is a mixed bag. You have geographies doing very well, others slowing down. But now we see -- right now, we see really strong momentum across the board.

Next question is from Hubert Lam, Bank of America.

I've got a few questions. Firstly, on your excess capital, which you're focused on in terms of paying dividends and buyback, does this mean that in the near term over the next 18 months, you don't plan on doing any M&A? That's the first question.

Second question is on private markets. Do you expect any slowdown in fundraising for the private markets, just given the noise in the sector, specifically on Slide 17. So will the rest of the fundraising target take longer than the first EUR 800 million that you've raised?

And next question is also on private markets. I just want to double check what you said about redemptions. Do the funds actually have redemption features or not? And if they do have redemption features, can you remind us what the redemption profile is? And if I could squeeze in one more on your investment write-down that you had in Q4. I just -- sorry, maybe I missed it, but can you remind us or just elaborate what's related to? And any relation to any co-investments you may have with clients or not on the write-down?

I will take your question on private markets. First of all, we are not expecting a slowdown. As I mentioned, we have a number of strategies that are actively fundraising right now, EUR 2.1 billion overall. We are kind of almost 1/3 -- more than 1/3 of that target. And we don't see any slowdown. I have to tell you that although we have been expanding globally, this franchise Italy still remains the most important market.

And most of the things that we read today in the press, they are very much geographically isolated apart from our investors reading what's happening in the U.S., but this is the U.S. is not Italy and people -- they are not concerned. Certainly, we have our advisers that is the value of the Azimut's business model. We sit down with clients and they explain the differences and provide all the comfort they need with constant updates on the portfolio and providing all the reasons why if more investments are, let's say, possible, then these are effectively and efficiently placed into other private market strategies.

In terms of liquidation or let's say, realization of investments and distribution to clients, as I said, we are expecting now, particularly for our private credit strategies, the first liquidation starting '28, '29. By nature, these are closed-ended funds. When it comes to private credit, think about direct lending, these are loans that have a term that is consistent with the fund life or the fund terms. We do not have any cockroaches. We have been always implementing very tight and disciplined investment policies, and it's not always working for every single investment the way we want.

But overall, we are delivering and you see that from the performance of the different verticals, in average, a better performance than we have sort of discussed with clients when they came -- when they have come to the portfolio. So in general, as I said, unaffected by what's happening away from Italy, clients are very well catered in terms of being informed and explained what's happening, and we are growing. That means that at the end of the day, people they understood the differences and they put more trust in us.

So I mean, looking to the capital structure, so probably going back to Slide 30, you can probably see where -- I mean that we put -- we put an amount of money that we commit for the '26 and '27 of EUR 300 million. This is -- I mean, it doesn't mean that we are going to do M&A with this amount. Obviously, it's a group that is growing.

Therefore, we have to look back also again to regulatory requirements, look back to the operational cash needs because, again, we are present in 80 company. Therefore, we need to maintain the right level of the operating cash. As well, we are investing in general on the IT, on the AI.

So we have a bulk of CapEx that we have to support to grow our business and to support internally, but also our financial adviser, our distribution network with the right instruments to proceed with the right way to meet and target the market.

So all in all is an amount that as well as different view and different elements to consider. This cover, let's say, the portion of cash that we would expect to keep for this. Moving to the point of the investments, as I was referring during the explanation, again, we decide -- I mean, we evaluated the opportunity to be very conservative on 2 VC proprietary investments. Therefore, this approach help us to look again to the forward-looking of the numbers more confident on the future results. So we take advantages on that.

And just to add one thing about investments, Alessandro said it all, but just also to link to what we said in the past. As opposed to the past, we are really putting at a same level growth and shareholder remuneration. What we are targeting is an optimal capital structure. Azimut is and it will always be a growth company. We will certainly consider should anything come to our attention, external financing for a transaction. What we are putting here is a clear statement in terms of giving the right and the same importance to shareholders and to growth opportunities. But it's a pretty unique proposition that we want to promote in the market. And hopefully, the market will appreciate it.

Next question is from Elena Perini Intesa Sanpaolo.

The first question is on Slide 30, again -- 29, sorry, again, on your capital distribution strategy. Because I read from the press release and then the slide also confirms it that you are going to distribute EUR 750 million to EUR 800 million in dividends over the next 18 months. So this, I suppose, also includes the dividend that you propose now and is going to be paid in May, just for a confirmation.

And then you mentioned that the dividend starting from next year will be split in 2 tranches. But I was wondering whether this would imply an interim dividend already in November this year and then the balance in May next year? Or on the contrary, you will have the first tranche referring to '26 earnings in May '27 and then the second tranche in November, just to clarify.

Then going to Slide #30 on TNB transaction. Considering that June now is quite close and you are still waiting for the approval of the Bank of Italy is on your -- on the effectiveness of the remediation measures that you have taken. I mean, is it more likely to see the finalization of the spin-off in the second half? Just to have some flavor about the potential time line.

And then finally, I have a question on your tax rate for next year. As you mentioned recurrent taxation for this year at around 21.5%. But if I remember well, you mentioned in the past a higher level of taxation for the future, but just for a confirmation.

Elena, I will answer your question on the dividend. So 2026 dividend paid against the 2025 earnings will be fully paid at the end of May. And we will propose to the general assembly of shareholders to switch to installment dividend payment starting with 2027 against 2026 earnings. That is a transition to a new system that is in line with what now a very large number of financial services companies do, but has become now a standard.

And I have to say that we see a strong merit to adopt the same policy as we have over the years, noted a behavior of the share price around the dividend payment that has been disturbing us creating unnecessary volatility. We want to offer very smooth and predictable cash flow generation for shareholders, hence, the decision to move to May and November payment against the previous year earnings.

Well, taking your point of TNB and the expectation, well, as you know, we built the renewal of the binding agreements and the exclusivity in a way that there will be no additional pressure in the market and as well to the regulator in a way that it automatically the date of June can be postponed to the end of December without any additional negotiation or whatever.

So basically, our attention now is on the remediation, as I was saying before, the funds and the FSI -- so FSI is focused on the regulatory side. And I would say both of us are concentrated to be in the right way, the migration process of this transaction because as you probably remember when also we discussed together, it's something that we cannot do not consider because it's significant and it's important tomorrow when the client will migrate and operate correctly starting from day 1.

So this is our focus for the 2026, considering also, obviously, the objective to get there within the end of the year. At the level of the tax rate, if you recall Slide 26, -- we have mentioned the benefits, so the lower tax rate for this year, but also we confirm our guidance at 25% for 2026.

Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Well, great. Fantastic. Thank you, everyone. Hopefully, we will catch up in person soon. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Azimut Group 9 Months 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Giorgio Medda, CEO of Azimut. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Azimut's 9 Months 2025 Results Presentation. I'm Giorgio Medda, CEO of the Group, and I'm very pleased to be here with Alessandro Zambotti, our CEO and Group CFO; and Alex Soppera, Head of Investor Relations.

This period marks another important step in our growth journey, reflecting both the strength of our business model and the consistency of our strategies across markets. This year, in 2025, we continue seeing a great execution and delivery in terms of objectives, translating into tangible results and exciting corporate development that we will certainly elaborate in detail later.

So moving on to Slide 3, please. So let me start with the key highlights for the period. So the first 9 months of 2025 represent the best on record for Azimut in terms of managed net inflows, reaching EUR 13 billion, together with a strong 17% growth in recurring net profit. These results confirm the strength of our diversified business model and certainly the quality of our recurring revenue base. We also made very significant progress on the TNB transaction, which continues to advance and represent a transformational step for the group. Alessandro will discuss about this in more detail later. But now we certainly -- I can say we operate with greater clarity and visibility over the next regulatory steps related to the TNB project whose authorization is expected by the second quarter of 2026.

Building on the strong commercial momentum to date, we are raising our core group net profit guidance for 2025. And today, we are projecting the core group net profit to exceed EUR 500 million in 2025, while we see 2026 net profit, including the expected contribution from the TNB transaction to surpass EUR 1 billion. As a result of the updated time line regarding the TNB authorization, we have decided to anticipate selected key guidelines from our Elevate 2030 strategic plan, in particular relating to our global business. The new strategic plan will outline an even more ambitious growth trajectory, further cementing Azimut's leadership position among global independent players. And -- but certainly, I mean, I will be able to elaborate on that in greater detail later in the presentation.

So moving to Slide 4 and turning to the highlights for the first 9 months of the year. Let me mention that total assets have reached EUR 123 billion, marking a new record for the group. Net inflows were equally strong at EUR 15 billion, of which 43% came from our global operations. This demonstrates and shows the continued diversification of our growth and the relevance of our global platform, which once again outperformed other players in the Italian asset management industry.

Revenues in the 9 months exceeded EUR 1 billion, supported by a 9% increase in recurring revenues, confirming the quality and resilience of our business mix. EBIT stood at EUR 471 million with recurring EBIT up 12% year-on-year, and group net profit reached EUR 386 million, representing a 17% growth compared to the same period last year. That is essentially driven by the steady expansion of our recurring profit base. And finally, let me stress what is the contribution from our global operations, reaching EUR 60 million, corresponding to EUR 43 million in the same period of 2024. So this is almost 50% growth versus the 9 months last year.

This consistent growth across regions confirms the effectiveness of our international strategy and the scalability of our global business model. And let me say as a general comment that these figures put us in a strong position to continue executing our long-term growth agenda while we continue creating value for our shareholders. So looking at the bridge between 9 months 2024 and 9 months 2025, I'm looking actually at Slide #5. Our group net profit reached EUR 386 million compared with EUR 439 million in the same period last year. And the difference here mainly reflects lower performance fees and capital gains below the operating profit line, while recurring profitability continues to grow very strongly.

So recurring EBIT increased by 12% after costs, confirming the solid momentum of our core operations, while performance fees were lower by about EUR 19 million, mainly due to insurance-related products. However, I would like to highlight our strong 3Q results and a solid start into Q4. Strategic affiliates in GP stakes have contributed slightly less than last year, with dividends from our GP stake in activities offset by lower net results from Sanctuary Wealth and AZ NGA.

Under other items below EBIT, the comparison is significantly affected by nonrecurring items, most notably the capital gain from the sale of our stake in Kennedy Lewis. And as such, it's important that throughout this call and for the broader analysis in general, I would rather focus solely on recurring growth, which posted a 17% growth year-on-year as a result of our continued expansion across the globe.

So on Page 6, you will see how our total assets have evolved since the start of the year under the new reporting method. I won't go too much into the detail of this analysis as these are figures that have been already published and commented on press releases. But the thing I would like to mention here that what is remarkable is the fact that growth was essentially coming from organic flows, which have totaled almost EUR 12 billion during the period and represents the best results on record in Azimut's history. And while we don't have all the final numbers as of yet, let me anticipate that October is poised to be another month with very strong inflows across the board.

Turning to Page 7. Again, here, I wouldn't go too much into the details of this, which will be also commented by Alessandro more in detail. But let me certainly mention in Slide 7, the breakdown based on our 4 distribution lines. Integrated Solutions is our core line of engagements with clients, including Italy, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, Taiwan and Turkey. This continues to be a powerhouse and command superior margins that are driven by the vertically integrated business model and market-leading positions that we have in these geographies.

We have then the Global Wealth division, which brings together the group's hubs in Monaco, Dubai, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States that is becoming an increasingly important growth driver, serving high net worth and ultra net worth clients worldwide. And then we have the institutional and wholesale effort that is gaining traction and saw a very strong increase in profitability.

Let me remind you that this segment brings together our global institutional initiatives across LatAm, Asia and EMEA and certainly Italy. The strategic importance of this business is rising and will continue to do so. It's a source of innovation, distribution diversity and partnerships such as the contribution for Nova. And also, let me mention that strategic affiliates remain in a phase of growth and consolidation, and we still have investments ramping up to expand the respective aggregating platforms of financial advisers in the U.S. and Australia. And very important also to mention that as we keep growing, the group is able to maintain a very healthy recurring net profit margin at 43 basis points.

So moving to Slide #8 and zooming in on the performance by region. The results confirm the strength and the diversification of our global platform. Again, here, I won't go into details too much as numbers and the notes speak for themselves. But let me tell you that something that is very, very important to highlight here, Azimut has evolved from a successful Italian player into a global platform with very strong local routes and international breadth that spans 20 countries. Every region is contributing to growth, guided by unified culture, consistent governance and the shared vision for the long-term value creation. We're going to talk about Elevate 2030 later, but these results set a very solid foundation for the ambitious growth targets that we are setting for ourselves in the years to come.

So let me now hand over to Alessandro for a more detailed commentary on the figures.

Thank you, Giorgio, and good afternoon to everybody. So we can now move to Slide 9. Total revenue in the first 9 months 2025 go up to EUR 1 billion, so marking an overall increase of 6%, EUR 61 million year-on-year. This is the result of an increase in recurring fees, plus EUR 58 million, thanks to the strong growth recorded in terms of total assets. And in particular, EUR 31 million came from the Italian perimeter with a strong contribution from all business lines from mutual funds, alternative funds and pension funds and also to Nova. Some numbers, at the level of the alternative funds, we have a positive contribution of EUR 12.5 million to the growth. Mutual funds around EUR 7 million and discretionary advisory services and pension funds contributed for EUR 9 million.

With regards to our global operation, we have a contribution of about EUR 27 million, thanks in this case as well to the asset growth, mainly driven by U.S., Brazil, Singapore and Monaco. We should also factor in the change in perimeter due to the consolidation of Kennedy Capital and HighPost, which occurred for EUR 17 million. So moving to the performance fees were EUR 4 million lower year-on-year, mainly reflecting softer results in the first half of the year, but partially offset by strong third quarter performance, thanks to Brazil, Turkey and Monaco. Then at the level of the insurance revenue, we have a decrease by EUR 80 million compared to the first 9 months of last year.

But however, in this case as well, despite market volatility, we have a positive contribution from performance fees of about EUR 27 million in these 9 months and in particular, strong contribution in the third quarter. We also grew our recurring revenue by about EUR 8 million compared to last year. And these 2 components largely compensated for the lower performance contribution resulting in an overall variance of EUR 16 million compared with last year.

And to conclude this first part of the revenues at the level of the other revenue were up to about EUR 15 million compared to last year. And I mean, in general, we continue to see good consistency across all the areas that contribute to this line. But I would like particularly to highlight the contribution from a structuring fee related to our Brazilian private infrastructure business. These fees are not recurring on a quarterly basis since they depend on deployment activity. But however, given the size and the ongoing growth of our infrastructure platform, we do expect them to recur on an hourly basis, although with varying amount depending on timing and at the level of the single transaction.

So then now moving to Slide 10. We are going to focus on cost trend. Compared to revenue growth of about EUR 61 million, cost increased by a total of about EUR 33 million. Distribution costs increased by EUR 24 million. This change is explained by the general increase in distribution costs, mainly within the Italian perimeter directly correlated to the growth of our assets and revenues and EUR 8 million as well from the growth of the variable and dispensing component, so an increase in marketing costs is also directly connected to the TNB project operation. And finally, EUR 4 million stemming from the increase in costs directly linked to the growth of our foreign business.

The administrative costs were up by about EUR 11 million, and this is largely explained by the change in perimeter, meaning the line-by-line consolidation of Kennedy Capital and HighPost that contributed about EUR 4 million with offsetting effect from the FX. And we also would like to highlight anyway the cost discipline, especially concerning the Italian perimeter. And then D&A on the other hand, we see that it is substantially in line with the previous year.

Moving to Slide 11. As you can see, considering the revenues and cost, the dynamic just explained, we're recording a strong EBIT growth of 12% or EUR 47 million year-on-year. Equally important, we recorded a growth in the recurring net profit of about 17%, EUR 44 million versus the first 9 months of last year. Before moving to the next slide, let's highlight also the significant contribution from the finance income item, which shows an increase of about EUR 62 million, driven by EUR 37 million from assets and portfolio performance, EUR 19 million from the fair value option and equity participation, EUR 9 million from interest and EUR 8 million from GP stakes & affiliates. And then also, we had a negative, in this case, negative impact of the IFRS for EUR 11 million.

Now moving to Slide 12. We have the classic picture of our net financial position, which is a positive balance at the end of September of EUR 765 million, substantially the same value of last year compared to June, we have an increase of around EUR 120 million. That can be reconciled considering the pretax results of EUR 198 million less the tax advance of EUR 7 million, EUR 8 million, its M&A for EUR 8.5 million, the proceeds from the sale of RoundShield that contributed to the cash for EUR 38 million and then a technical adjustment of EUR 27 million from UCI units moved out from the net financial position.

Moving to Slide 13. Let me share a key update on the TNB project. During the past month, we secured the antitrust approval to acquire the banking license. And I am delighted to announce today that we have signed yesterday a binding agreement with the Banca di Sconto. Our negotiation with FSI continued following the press release published to date. We have updated the project finalization time line to Q2 '26. This timetable establishes a clear and orderly process, providing Azimut and its shareholders with greater visibility on the final stages of the transaction.

The schedule is fully aligned with the operational work already underway for the launch of TNB. And then I remind you, once again, the extraordinary long-term value of this transaction. So again, the EUR 1.2 billion potential total consideration plus the EUR 2.4 billion revenue guarantee plus the 20% stake that we will maintain in TNB.

Turning to Slide 14. We have here shared the '25 targets. We confirm our net inflow target for the full year of EUR 28 billion to EUR 31 billion. We have already achieved more than EUR 15 billion of net inflows at the end of September. We saw preliminary figures for October and an expected contribution of about EUR 14 billion from the NSI integration could lead us to reach up the guidance.

And then moving to Slide 15. Given the strong results achieved in the first 9 months, we are pleased to announce an upgrade to our '25 core group net profit target. We now expect to exceed EUR 500 million in '25 compared to our previous lower end guidance of EUR 400 million. Looking ahead to 2026, including the expected contribution from TNB in this year, as a result of the updated time line, we estimate group net profit to amount above EUR 1 billion.

Finally, reflecting both the strength of our results and our solid capital position, the Board of Directors intend to propose announced the dividend policy for the 2025 financial year. This will be above last year EUR 1.75 per share, which represented a 61% payout on recurring net profit, further demonstrating our commitment to rewarding shareholders through sustainable and growing returns. We will share the final details with our full year '25 results presentation that will be happening at the beginning of March '26.

Thank you for your time and your attention. Now I hand over to Giorgio, again.

Thank you, Alessandro, and I will move to Slide 16. So following the completion of the ordinary supervisory review by the Bank of Italy on part of our Italian business, we can say that we have full clarity and greater visibility on the regulatory time lines ahead. This gives us a very solid foundation to move forward with confidence towards the launch of TNB that is a key milestone in Azimut's evolution. The group strategic plan, Elevate 2030, which will include targets for all business lines and both the Italian and global platforms will be presented in full as previously announced to the market following the authorization of the TNB transaction. However, global expansion continues to be a cornerstone of Azimut's strategy, and we continue building on our presence in 20 markets.

And we are very determined to continue strengthening our leadership among the world's leading independent players. And that is why, in the meantime, we have decided to share a few key guidelines focused on our global business that is a part not impacted by the supervisory review. This plan emphasize growth, diversification and sustainable value creation for shareholders. With Elevate 2030, we are certainly defining an even more ambitious growth trajectory, one that will showcase the full potential of our diversified global platform and reinforce Azimut's position as a truly global success story.

But let us now take a closer look at what lies ahead, and I will move to Slide 17. So first of all, to help everyone to better understand the potential of our global operations, we started with a bottom-up analysis of the expected contribution in terms of net inflows from each region. This has historically been an area where the market underestimated our potential, and we believe these figures better illustrate the scalability of our platform. What we're showing here are the expected yearly net inflows from our global operations only, and we are excluding Italy. These targets are indeed very ambitious, but we see them as incredibly realistic. They are consistent with our historical growth trajectory, which also reflects a clear step-up as we continue to scale, broaden our investment solution base and bring innovation to our markets.

And indeed, we believe a strong potential for Azimut to replicate the success that we have achieved in Italy. We expect total net inflows from our global platform between EUR 5 billion and EUR 8 billion per year, with the Americas region remaining a major growth driver, contributing EUR 2 billion to EUR 3 billion annually, supported by the integration of NSI in the United States, which will add approximately $16 billion or EUR 14 billion upon closing of the transaction at the end of the year. Our strategic affiliates led by Sanctuary Wealth in the U.S., AZ NGA in Australia, also very well positioned now to capture powerful structural trends and the shift of top financial advisers away from bank-owned networks towards independent platforms continues to accelerate and the ongoing intergenerational wealth transfer in both markets is expanding every day the addressable client base for advisory-driven models like ours.

For the strategic affiliates, we are expecting to add between EUR 1.5 billion and EUR 2.5 billion of annual inflows, confirming the strength of our partnership model in high potential markets. The EMEA and Asia Pacific regions will also contribute steadily, driven by our ongoing expansion in markets such as Egypt, Taiwan and Singapore. And overall, this figure illustrates the depth and balance of our global business. In general, what I would like to stress here that the international component of Azimut is becoming an increasingly powerful engine of growth and value creation under the new strategic plan.

So moving to Slide 18. Here, we are really converting the inflows into the overall asset base at the end of the period. And we are now projecting our global average total assets to grow from around EUR 54 billion to between EUR 95 billion and EUR 110 billion by 2030. This is a very exciting plan. We are essentially showing here our ambition to double our asset base. But certainly, it demonstrates the strength and maturity of our global platform. Achieving these goals will require certainly focus and determination, but I believe we have all the right elements in place. We have now a robust and diversified product offering across public and private markets. We have the ability to tailor solution to the specific needs of each client, and we have a unique entrepreneurial model and mindset that will allow us to move quickly and seize opportunities. This combination gives Azimut a unique and clear competitive advantage and positions us among the very few independent global players able to grow at scale while preserving quality and agility.

And now moving to Slide 19. I want to really focus on margin. This is a very important element to help the market better understand what lies ahead and the true earnings power of our global business. Here, we show where our current net profit margins stand today by region and where we expect them to evolve by 2030. We have provided what is a wide enough range to capture different market conditions, but also we want to illustrate what is the significant operating leverage and the economies of scale that our global platform can deliver as it continues to grow. The Americas are expected to see margins rising from around 27 basis points today to between 25 and 35 basis points by 2030. And this will be our largest region by total assets, supported by the NSI integration and the planned launch of active ETFs, which will bring Azimut's global product capabilities to the world's largest market. EMEA remains our most profitable region with margins expanding towards 50 to 60 basis points, while we see the potential for the Asia Pacific region to gradually improve its contribution as the region scales and matures.

Looking at these figures on a consolidated level, we expect the global business, excluding Italy and the strategic affiliates, to reach a net profit margin between 30 and 40 basis points by 2030, corresponding to an annual profit of approximately EUR 180 million to EUR 280 million. This compares with a margin of around 35 basis points and a net profit of EUR 70 million generated in the first 9 months of this year. Also, I think it's important here to put into perspective that since 2019, our global net profit has grown at a compound annual growth rate well above 35%. And this gives us a very strong base and clear visibility on the profitability path we are building towards 2030.

I would move to Slide 19, 20 and 21. And on the next 3 slides, you see the same breakdown as before, but this time by business line rather than geography. And that should help everyone to cross check our assumptions and better understand the contribution of each vertical to the overall growth plan. I will not spend too much time here, but it's important to highlight the strength and balance across our global platform.

And let me tell you that the Elevate 2030 plan will bring greater transparency to the market by showing our strategic and financial objectives through these 4 verticals that we have already introduced this year with the new reporting structure. This structure certainly enhances clarity, ensures consistency in how we represent value creation and makes it easier to appreciate the growth and profitability potential for each business line. And obviously, 4 verticals provide a diversified and complementary growth platform that is underpinning our market leadership, operational integration and long-term strategic partnerships.

I would move now to Slide 23, where there is essentially highlighted what is a key pillar for Elevate 2030, that is strategic capital management. This is a framework designed to enhance our valuation to strengthen financial flexibility and deliver consistent and attractive returns to our shareholders. Our focus is on improving transparency and disclosure to help close the valuation gap that we continue to believe the market is still applying to the stock and not really truly appreciating the potential of Azimut.

We are also proactively managing regulatory risk by simplifying our structure and ensuring greater operational clarity across jurisdictions. And we furthermore plan to unlock value from our global operations through a series of operations that could potentially include targeted demergers, dual listings and/or strategic partnerships. We're also very pleased today to announce a new share buyback program with a commitment to cancel up to EUR 500 million of repurchased shares over the next 18 to 24 months, equivalent to around 10% of our share capital. This initiative aims to maximize shareholder remuneration and reflects the constructive feedback that we have received from our investors over the last few months. And it's a clear signal of our confidence in the strength of the group, the resilience of our cash generation and our commitment to delivering tangible value to shareholders.

Beyond this, we remain committed to maintaining a debt-free position given the strong cash flow generation of our business. However, we will preserve the optionality for future value-accretive M&A opportunities to be financed via debt. And as Alessandro has already highlighted, we will propose a new enhanced ordinary dividend for the full year 2025 versus the prior year. And certainly, we will give you more insight with our full year results in March 2026 when it comes to a broader and more comprehensive dividend policy as part of the Elevated 2030 plan.

I mean, I think we can already anticipate that when it comes to shareholder remuneration, one key principle will be that any policy that we will announce to the market will be aligned with cash flow generation to ensure an attractive and sustainable payout over time.

So let me move to the last slide, really to wrap up everything that we discussed and shared with you today. So first of all, we are upgrading our 2025 core net profit target to above EUR 500 million, and we project now net income to exceed EUR 1 billion in 2026. This reflects the solid momentum we have built throughout the year and continued strength of our recurring earnings.

Second, we have made meaningful progress on the TNB transaction, gaining enhanced clarity on the time line for the next steps. And this gives us a clear regulatory and strategic pathway to move forward. Third, with Elevate 2030, we are releasing ambitious yet achievable targets for our global operations, and we project between EUR 5 billion and EUR 8 billion of annual net inflows over the next 5 years and total assets between EUR 95 billion and EUR 110 billion by 2030, with an expected net profit margin in the region of 30 to 40 basis points.

And last point, our strategic capital management remains a key driver of value creation, supported by a EUR 500 million share buyback program with full cancellation of repurchased shares and the new dividend policy to be presented in 2026 after the completion of the TNB transaction. But as we mentioned, already we are providing an announced dividend payout for 2025, obviously applying on a payment in 2026. Together, we believe these initiatives position Azimut for a new chapter of profitable discipline and sustainable growth.

With this, we are done and we certainly open the floor to any questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Gian Luca Ferrari of Mediobanca.

Three for me, please. The first one is on the foreign business. I think what you are telling us today, Giorgio, is that the foreign operations are closing this year very close to the cost of capital you put in that development outside Italy. And given the trajectory you are disclosing today, is it fair to assume that by 2027, the IRR of this will reach 20% or something very close to that level?

The second is on Nova. Last week, Amundi and then UniCredit, they have been pretty vocal in what is the relationship among them. I will not ask you the level of AUM you are expecting from UniCredit given the acceleration of the divorce, let's say, from Amundi. But I'm more curious to understand what is the level of margins after 2028? So after UniCredit will have exercised the call option. Is it fair to assume that your 20% in Nova will represent something like 15, 20 basis points on the AUM that UniCredit will have transferred at that point?

The third question is, I don't know if I can ask this question, but are you eventually considering a dual listing of Azimut even in other stock exchange like in the U.S., for example? And sorry, if I may, the last one. I saw in the press release, you -- after the Bank of Italy inspection, you have some, let's say, adjustments to the business to be compliant with what Bank of Italy is asking to you. Are the costs related to that material or we are talking about a few million euros?

Gian Luca, I'll pick your first and second question. So regarding the foreign business or the global business, as we call it [indiscernible], you look at this year and you look at what we have delivered for the first 9 months, I think it would be fair to assume that we will generate a return on invested capital of between 13% to 15% that I think is above our cost of capital. So I think we are already proving value creation. And yes, indeed, when you look at the earnings trajectory over the next couple of years, certainly, I see as very realistic, a return on invested capital in the region of 20% within this time frame.

When it comes to Nova, as you know, and I think it's important for me to stress it again, we will never, never disclose any confidential information regarding the activity of clients with our platform. We have never done that with any client. We will never do with Nova. But let me guide you towards some generic principles that govern our partnership with Nova. Certainly, the moment that UniCredit will exercise the call option to buy 80% of Nova, that should not have a material impact on earnings contribution. As already today, we have an agreement under which we are working like UniCredit was already an 80% shareholder.

And when it comes to basis points, I think we've guided in the past a range between 40 to 50 basis points. I would assume that we are ballpark again in line with that level in the second stage of this partnership if we get to the second stage after the exercise of the call option.

You were also asking about dual listing. Yes, indeed, the U.S. stock exchange remains a very viable option for us. Certainly, we see today a very significant valuation differential for players in our industry being listed there as opposed to be listed in European markets, but we will retain obviously full optionality in deciding which exchange will be eventually decided for our alternative listing.

I take the Bank of Italy side. So in general, as you said and as you probably read on the press, the report is focused on increase our strength in terms of [indiscernible] strategic planning. So nothing let's say, that cause us an impact on the business and therefore, on the P&L of the group. Therefore, it's just a matter to focus on paperwork and fix what, let's say, they found missing. But as you said also during the question, it's just a few, let's say, a few euros to spend to fix quickly the gap and then looking forward, focusing on our business.

The next question is from Giovanni Razzoli of Deutsche Bank.

Two set of questions. The first one is on the target for the international operation contribution. You are targeting EUR 5 billion to EUR 8 billion of inflows, half of that are from the states. But if I look at the 9 months run rate, you are already at close to EUR 4 billion, EUR 4.5 billion with U.S. at EUR 2.5 billion. So I was wondering if we can consider the low end of the range, this EUR 5.8 billion contribution of inflows from the international operation as a quite conservative target.

The second question relates to the announcement of the share buyback. I was wondering how shall we look at the 10% share buyback that you have announced in the context of the 3% treasury shares that you have already owned. So shall we assume that the 10% is on top of the 3% or you will proceed with the cancellation of the 3% and then on top of that, in 2 years' time, you will buy another 10% with the cancellation?

And then as you have mentioned medium, long-term targets, given that your net financial position is very strong, actually, you are cash positive with a capital-light business, shall we assume that apart from this EUR 500 million share buyback, if I move forward, I don't know, 3, 4 years down the road, the share buyback becomes a kind of recurring component of your distribution strategy, let's say, EUR 500 million of share buyback in 2 years' time as a kind, as I said, of recurring contribution of your remuneration policy?

Yes, Giovanni. So let me start with the question regarding the EUR 5 billion to EUR 8 billion expected net new money from our non-Italian operations. Indeed, we have provided you a target. This is a target applied for a 5-year period. Certainly, we always work with the ambition of beating the targets that we set for ourselves. And indeed, I would say that the bottom end of that range assumes a deterioration in market conditions and things changing as opposed to what we are leaving now. But the range is a range, is a long period of time, and I would certainly with everyone in Azimut to make sure that our real objective is to beat that range.

When it comes to the share buyback, I don't know which figure you are looking at, but I would say that probably today, treasury shares amount to 1% of our outstanding capital. And you should assume that the 10% is on top of this 1%.

And for the question regarding what will happen in the next 3 to 4 years, I would certainly be thinking what we have announced today. And time will tell. I think we are making a very strong statement in terms of committing to ensure that our shareholder remuneration policy is inclusive and makes all our shareholders to benefit from the value that we create every day in our business around the world. What is important to say here is that after the TNB transaction, we'll be able to provide a more comprehensive shareholder remuneration policy, including also the ordinary payout policy when it comes to dividends.

The next question is from Hubert Lam of Bank of America.

[indiscernible] in the global business. Just wondering how much of that would you expect it to be coming from organic in your plans? And how much is it M&A? Do you need M&A to kind of get there? Or are you confident that organic, you can still achieve your targets?

Second question is on the share buyback, the EUR 500 million. I'm just wondering in terms of timing when it could start, do you need the approval for the new bank first before you can start the share buyback? Or can it come before that?

And lastly, any questions on the new bank. Any update in terms of expected profits you expect from this, both in '26 and maybe beyond that?

Hubert, I'll reply to your first 2 questions. I'm not sure I got right your first one. But let me start with the first one regarding organic growth from our global operations, the guidance we provided, you should assume it's mostly organic. And by the way, when you look at what we have done this year, again, the figure that we mentioned earlier is essentially mostly organic. So you should really consider any M&A contributing to this level.

When it comes to the share buyback, as a matter of fact, the share buyback is live in the market because we had already approved the share buyback with our AGM in the first quarter this year. What the AGM will approve next year will be the renewal of the plan and the cancellation of the repurchased shares. But the share buyback is, as a matter of fact, right now live in the market. And as far as your first question is concerned, we missed it.

Yes. Sorry about that. Yes, so the answer to the first 2 are very clear. The third question -- yes, sorry, on the new bank. Just wondering how much in terms of profit contribution we can expect from it in terms of delivering profits in '26. I know that's just the first year and also like beyond, any update in terms of guidance around that?

Well, nowadays, it's running around -- with the projection at the end of the year, it's around EUR 60 million for '25. Therefore, I would say we are going to be the 20% of this range less a few costs that obviously has to be incurred through the fact that it has no spending banks. Therefore, I would say that we are in this range.

The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM.

A few left. One is on the acquisition side. I read that your Chairman also indicated that there might be opportunities for future acquisitions, especially in LatAm. So I was wondering if you can give us an idea what is, let's say, of interest for the group in terms of completing the setup of the global operations you have.

And broadly speaking, what is the leverage that you would consider as a good setup for the group if you find an interesting opportunity also inorganic in the framework of the -- also the capital remuneration and shareholder remuneration that you have in mind?

Okay. Thank you, Alberto. So your first question referring to the interview of our Chairman a couple of weeks ago in Italy. Indeed, we will continue to explore and to seek acquisition opportunities on a bolt-on basis and acquisitions that will never be material in terms of cash outlay and certainly will carry a strong strategic sense in terms of adding and complementing our existing businesses around the world. I think during the interview, it was mentioned our interest in Latin America.

Let me tell you that there are a few situations we are looking at in Brazil, but that would be negligible in terms of cash investment for the firm, but certainly we will strengthen our distribution business in the country. And when it comes to the leverage, we often said that we certainly recognize the merits of having an optimal capital structure policy. And in general, we would guide the market when it comes to what we would envisage in the case of a transformative or material M&A transaction in terms of leverage, probably in a situation where we have a net debt to EBIT in the region of 1 to 1.5x ratio.

The next question is from Elena Perini of Intesa Sanpaolo.

I have some left. The first one is about your new net profit target for '25 and 2026. So basically, you move the more than EUR 1 billion target to next year due to the timing of the conclusion of the TNB transaction, if I understand correctly. And while you have for 2025, a target about EUR 500 million. In terms of targets, just to refer to your global business. The wide range that you set for 2030 is EUR 180 million to EUR 280 million is only due to the different range of annual flows and due to the different potential margins on the assets? Or are there any other factors that could explain this wide range?

And then a clarification about other income and tax rate. About other income, you mentioned structuring fees. Are there any recurring items for next quarters too? Or do they represent a one-off item? While for the tax rate, I think that there are some one-offs for this quarter as you confirm your guidance of 25% for the full year, but I'm asking you about this.

Yes. Thank you, Elena. I'm going to take a few of your questions, and then Giorgio will conclude. So starting from your first part relating to the net profit, the new target and as well the moving of the EUR 1 billion to the '26, it's clearly -- your understanding is correct. I mean the contribution of TNB that we plan -- I mean, we're planning at the end of the year is not going to happen. Therefore, obviously, the contribution and the equity transaction is going to happen in '26 and therefore, as well the P&L impact from this transaction is going to be booked next year.

And at the same time, following the good results and the good trend of the group, we were updating the guidance for the, let's say, the simple reason that the projection that we see, the trajectory that we see for the last few months of the year is if nothing happens, let's say, complicate, we will be able to get the target.

Then you refer to the other income. As you were saying, there is a one-off effect that is linked to the structuring fees. But at the same time, as I was saying at the beginning, it has not to be considered one-off for the yearly basis because it's quarterly basis, for sure, we cannot say that every quarter, we will have this contribution. But looking on a yearly basis, this amount I mean could happen that following this type of services that we are providing, they came up -- I mean, a contribution as well on the other income on the future years. And then at the level of the tax, I think it's more close to the constant of seasonability. I mean, this quarter, it's always lower than in December, considering also the provision of all the dividends coming from the other countries, we will probably get higher impact of tax for that, we kept the guidance stable as per the previous.

And yes, when it comes to the 2030 margin targets, the EUR 180 million to EUR 280 million net profit from global operations. Look, this range is admittedly very large. It reflects simply the addition of the lower bound targets for each division or geography and the upper bound. There is nothing else there. It certainly is a basic assumption that the business mix going forward will essentially remain unchanged or not dramatically different from what it is today. But as I said, we work every day to beat the target that we give ourselves, and we certainly do our best to even do better than what we are disclosing today. It's 5 years, it's a pretty long period of time, but we are starting off a very strong base, and I see us capable of doing very, very well.

The next question is from Ian White of Autonomous Research.

Just a couple from me, please. First of all, can you call out some of the most important drivers of the improved organic net inflow performance this year, please? I'm particularly interested in where you think you've seen the strongest growth in your market share, thinking about the organic flows specifically. That's question one.

And question two, in terms of the Bank of Italy's inspection, can you say a bit more about the specific findings there and the remediations that you're going to introduce? Am I right to read into the statement today that the delay to TNB approval is linked to the regulators' findings? And if so, what's your view as to why the regulator has connected those things, please?

Okay. Let me take your questions. So I'll start with the first regarding the underlying drivers of our terrific net new money performance this year. I think we -- if you look at the presentation that we have shown earlier, Slide 6, you find what is a pretty accurate detailed breakdown in terms of net new money to different product lines as opposed to different geographies. Let me tell you from a qualitative standpoint that fund solutions have been doing very well in Italy. Certainly, we have the contribution of Nova here, but let me mention what also we have done in Turkey, in Egypt, in the U.S., that is certainly our key product, our bread and butter, and we are proving now to be able to grow both catering to individual clients and institutional as well in terms of wholesale agreement.

Let me mention that our Wealth Management business has been this year delivering incredible growth out of Asia, out of the Middle East. Switzerland, Monaco as well doing better than the previous years. And we see now what is a very sustained momentum that is a testament of our ability of building now a cross-border platform and being able to deal with high net worth, ultra net worth individuals that are recognizing Azimut's the ability and the capability to deliver performance vis-a-vis even larger players.

Then when it comes to your question regarding the ordinary inspection from Bank of Italy, yes, again, I would refer to the press release, you should assume that we are subject to inspections every week. As you can imagine, we operate across 20 countries. We are subject to the supervision of 20 regulators, sometimes in certain markets like in the U.S. by 2 regulators in the same country. That is also the case for Italy, by the way. And there are routine inspections. So you can say that every day, we are subject to an inspection. So I do not see the Bank of Italy inspection in Italy has been particularly different from others that we have been subject to.

And also, let me stress you that the -- let's say, the topic of the inspection was not the announced transaction with TNB. The inspection was very much covering for our, let's say, asset management product factory activities and has been very much referring to this aspect of the business that is not related to the announced transaction with FSI. One of the outcomes of the transaction was that we need to put in place some very ordinary remedial actions. And as you can imagine, although these actions are not related to the TNB transaction and considering the time line is relatively short, we will work on this remediation plan with some very close deadlines, also suggesting that there's nothing dramatic there, maintaining what is an achievable target for the transaction to close within Q2.

By the way, this inspection started even before the binding agreement was signed with FSI, and it's really to be seen as completely unrelated. Maybe unfortunate in terms of timing, but to be honest, not really a reason of concern for us.

Okay. If I can just clarify, I'm not sure if I missed this. In terms of the -- is the delay to TNB approval a direct consequence of things that the regulator has found on its -- during its ordinary inspection? Or am I reading that incorrectly?

Not at all. It's procedural, if you want. And as we said very often, the 2 things are separate. There is no really -- we should not see the TNB transaction as the inspection that could be related to each other. As a matter of fact, the transaction occurs in a way where the company that is spinning off half of our network is the one that was subject to the inspection, but nothing of the activities that will be spun off has been subject to the inspection itself. It was mostly related to funds management to discretion portfolio management, really nothing at all that was related to the asset base that will be spun off.

[Operator Instructions] Mr. Medda, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Okay. Let's close the call here, and let me wish everyone a good end of the year. And obviously, we keep looking forward to seeing you soon. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Azimut Holding's First Half 2025 Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Giorgio Medda, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time and joining us today for Azimut H1 2025 results presentation. I'm Giorgio Medda, CEO of the group, and I'm pleased to be here with Alessandro Zambotti, our CEO and Group CFO; and Alex Soppera, our Head of Investor Relations.

General comment before we dive into the slides. This has been a defining semester for Azimut. We have exceeded expectations across the board and I have to say, navigated very volatile market conditions, and this has been possible only courtesy of our resilience and discipline. At the same time, we have laid the groundwork for the group next phase of growth. And I think what we have seen in the last 6 months bodes very well for what lies ahead for us.

So let's move to Slide 3, please. So let me begin with the key highlights of the first 6 months of 2025, which marked a very strong start to the year from a strategic, financial and operational perspective. We delivered a record EUR 8.2 billion in managed net inflows, the highest first half figure we have ever achieved. Alongside this, our recurring net income has grown by 18% year-on-year, and that is a testament to the resilience and scalability of our platform even in very challenging market and macro conditions.

But our progress goes far beyond financials. During the semester, we successfully introduced a new organizational metrics that has allowed for greater transparency, improved accountability and a streamlined reporting structure as we will discuss in detail later in the presentation. We also made tangible progress on simplifying our business verticals, particularly in the U.S. with the transaction of North Square Investments that we have announced last week, RoundShield that we announced just yesterday.

Throughout this period, we have remained focused on executing several strategic business development initiatives, such as the key strategic partnership with Eni Next to promote Italian excellence globally, particularly in the energy sector. And we have forged several distribution agreements with leading financial institutions throughout our global hubs, or the release of our exciting digital strategy.

Lastly, but not -- very important for our progress, we have moved forward on the TNB transaction since our key announcements at the beginning of May, and this remains a strategic priority for the group and obviously will be discussed in more detail later by Alessandro.

And finally, given the strong underlying performance in the first half, our confidence in our product pipeline for the second half and obviously, our execution capabilities, we have upgraded our target for both net profit and net inflows.

So moving to the next slide. And before we dive into the strategic and operational updates, let me take a moment to highlight our group's strong financial performance in the first half of '25, which clearly reflects how we are firing on all cylinders across all metrics.

As of the end of June, total assets reached EUR 113 billion, up 11.1% year-to-date. Net inflows for the period were EUR 9 billion, of which 43% came from our international operations, and that is a clear demonstration of our global scale and distribution capabilities, and despite FX headwinds as we will elaborate later on.

Total revenues stood at EUR 646 million, with recurring revenues growing by 7.1% year-on-year, and that has been supported by our strong fee-based model and growth across all core markets with particularly strong contribution from Italy, Turkey, Brazil, Singapore and the U.S.

As far as operating profit is concerned, EBIT came at EUR 291 million, with recurring EBIT increasing by 8.6% versus the first half of last year, driven by higher revenues and an overall disciplined approach to cost management. Importantly, 18% of net profits were generated outside Italy, and that is a very meaningful step from the 15% in the same period last year. And that, if you want, further confirms our international expansion strategy is now bearing fruit. These figures put us in a very strong position to continue executing our long-term growth agenda at the same time, creating value for shareholders.

Now moving on the two following slides, we show you what was the recently introduced visual representation of what is driving our profitability in a more intuitive and transparent way. So as we focus on a quarter-on-quarter view, Q2 showed a very balanced picture with broad-based growth across recurring revenues, selective performance fee contribution and disciplined cost management. And that, as I said earlier, confirms the resilience of our diversified platform.

Instead, as we look at the year-on-year bridge for net profit, as we show in Slide 6. We set out to highlight two things. In the first half of this year, we delivered a reported net profit of EUR 240 million, compared to EUR 321 million in the same period of last year. And that needs to be explained.

Obviously, this comparison is significantly affected by nonrecurring items, most notably the capital gain from the sale of our stake in Kennedy Lewis. And as such, it's important that throughout this call and for the broader analysis in general, we will focus solely on recurring growth, which posted a strong 18% year-on-year performance as a result of our continued expansion across the globe.

Moving to the next slide. You will see how our total assets have evolved since the start of the year under the new reporting method. I won't go too much into the details here as we have already published and commented these figures in our press release, but let me highlight a few things, essentially the strong demand for mutual fund solutions since the start of the year, supported by our networks and partners in Italy and Turkey, and the very sustained momentum in our wealth management operations in Dubai, Monaco and Singapore, as well as what is a very strong momentum across our institutional franchise.

As of the end of June, our total assets have reached EUR 113 billion, up nearly 5% since the beginning of the year despite significant FX headwinds. So this is something that we need to mention. Obviously, we have all commented about the depreciation of the U.S. dollar since the beginning of the year, the steepest decline since 1973, a 14% depreciation, coupled also with some local currencies performance such as for the Turkish lira, minus 27% year-to-date. And that has obviously impacted the value of our assets at the end of the year. And when you look at our business, obviously, we lost EUR 5.5 billion on the total assets in euro terms.

Nonetheless, the message that we want to send across is very clear. Despite material FX pressure, we have still grown by 5% year-to-date, and that is thanks to the strength of our net inflows performance. And what is even more remarkable to highlight is that this growth has been driven almost entirely by organic flows, which have amounted to EUR 6.3 billion in the first half alone. Just to put that in perspective, that is approximately 68% of what we had achieved organically in all of 2024. And this is the first half inflow result for the Azimut history in terms of performance, the strongest inflow results in our history. So these results confirm the resilience of our core business and certainly the fact that our diversified model is delivering growth across all channels, geographies and client segments.

Turning now on to Page 8. As you might recall, what you see here is the blueprint of how we intend to represent the group going forward. This is an organizational matrix that mirrors how we actually run the business. And on this slide, we present the total assets as of the end of June, structured by product lines across the top from investment funds to digital asset management, and by key distribution channels along the left.

As we already said during our Q1 earnings call, this is more than a new reporting layout. This is a very transparent and aligned view of how our platform creates value. And as promised on the next slide, we are giving greater clarity to the financial community on growth, scale and profitability across our core pillars.

As you can see in Slide 9, increased transparency into the earnings potential of our platform is realized by showing you the economics behind our different distribution cohorts. Let me walk you through a few key highlights here. Integrated solutions, that is our core vertical, which includes Italy, Brazil, Mexico, and Turkey continues to be our powerhouse and command superior margins that are driven by the vertically integrated business model and market-leading positions that we have in these geographies.

Global wealth that comprises our hubs in Monaco, Dubai, Singapore, Switzerland and the U.S. is becoming an increasingly important growth engine. These are very high potential markets. While margins are slightly below last year due essentially to business mix and the impact of FX across different geographies, we are building the foundations for long-term value with our unique proposition, scalable operations and what is very sophisticated client demand.

Then we have institutional and wholesale that is gaining traction. This segment brings together our institutional initiatives across Latin America, Asia, Italy and EMEA. And while its margin is aligned with the industry average, the strategic importance of this business is rising. And this is a source of innovation, distribution diversity, a partnership such as the contribution from Nova.

And taking a step back, what is important is the overall picture. We are building a multi-engine platform where each business line has clear accountability, strategic intent and a pathway to scalable profitability. And all of this, while maintaining and improving a very healthy group level recurring net profit margin of 43 basis points. In short, our platform is now more transparent, more balanced and certainly better positioned than ever to capture global opportunities.

On the following slide, Slide 10, you see what is a simplified overview of our H1 '25 performance versus the same period last year, applying our new reporting structure that we had already introduced with our Q1 results. With these two new representations, we strongly believe that it should be easier for investors and analysts alike to understand the key business drivers of our business and how we are creating value every day. I won't go into the details too much as these numbers and a few notes speak for themselves. But what I want to emphasize here is the following.

The overall picture is one of a truly global platform where each region is progressing along its growth path, supported by strong governance, scalable systems and local leadership. We don't want to longer be just an Italian asset manager with international ambitions, we are a global group with local excellence and financial architecture to compete and win across all markets.

So let's now move on to our exciting corporate business development. I want to start with Slide 11, the partnership with NSI that we announced mid last week. This partnership marks a very pivotal moment in our U.S. strategy, where we are building a highly integrated scalable B2B2C platform, rather than a traditional B2C model, which we believe is the best suited to the dynamics of the U.S. market.

NSI is an exceptional fit for our group like Azimut, it operates as an integrated asset management distribution firm and [ carries ] an outstanding reach and execution capability set. Its unique positioning enables NSI to capture what is the ongoing structural growth of all U.S. and wealth assets -- and wealth asset management industry, managing a broader range of products and penetrating even deeper into its distribution networks.

More importantly, in Slide 12, we want to show what is the strategic ambition and the strength of our positioning in the U.S. and how this is turning into a very critical pillar of our global strategy. Our U.S. platform has reached now a pro forma total of $50 billion in assets, and positions us among the few international players with a fully integrated asset management distribution model across the country. Certainly, this is the result of a long-term vision and disciplined execution, but is also the result of work done over the years where we have built a piece by piece diversified, synergistic and scalable architecture.

On the asset management side, we operate across both public and private markets. While on the distribution side, we have created a powerful multichannel approach. Our RIAs Service platform led by Sanctuary Wealth is today one of the most respected in the U.S. and continues to grow at an incredible pace. And also, I want to mention our direct presence in the RIA space with Azimut Apice and Azimut Genesis to advisory-led businesses that speak to our heritage of long-term alignment with clients. We believe that this integrated approach allows us to cover the entire value chain from investment strategy and product manufacturing, to advisory services and direct client engagement.

The U.S. obviously has an immense potential. It's also a very complex market, and we believe that scale will come over time, but we also believe we are uniquely positioned to compete not as a niche operator, but a credible long-term player in one of the world's most dynamic market. So in short, we are just getting started in the U.S., but the foundations that we have built are strong and the opportunity ahead is very significant.

Another exciting news, fresh of the press from yesterday is where we announced that Azimut sold its stake in RoundShield Partners to Harrison Street. With the sale of our stake in RoundShield, Azimut completes what is the second GP stake exit in just 16 months, confirming our ability to generate real liquidity and value from the lower middle market segment.

After exiting Kennedy Lewis to Goldman Sachs in 2024, this latest deal that is a strategic sales to Harrison Street shows we can monetize our GP stakes across different buyer profiles, and this is just in a few years. Together, the two exits have delivered a DPI of 2.9x, and IRR of 60%, placing Azimut among the top-performing players in this space. Azimut remains fully committed to the GP stake strategy, an area that has been a focus for our business since 2019 through our experienced New York-based team, and we remain strongly committed to our major partners, HighPost and Broadlight, both of which operate with a high growth potential and a clear focus on attractive long-term secular industries.

Also, let me touch briefly upon on Slide 14 on the very exciting partnership that we have recently announced with Eni, one of the largest energy companies globally. The partnership with Eni has a very clear target, raising EUR 100 million, starting in September, to be deployed in the cleantech and energy transition industries. This is a partnership that sees Azimut is an Italian excellence in the world to invest in the most exciting and promising investments in key sectors and industries for the global economies.

This is also a testament to the ability of Azimut of signing partnerships with Italian players who have a very strong reputation in the world markets where they operate. I want to mention here our partnership with Ferrari that has resulted starting in 2023 with the launch of Automobile Heritage Enhancement fund that is the world's first and only evergreen investment fund for historic super and hypercars, a fund that has raised commitments to date of almost EUR 200 million, and delivered a performance to investors to date of approximately 18%. So our growth journey as a global investment partner continues partnering with the country's leading innovators in their respective sectors.

And the last point I'd like to mention is the publication of our digital strategy white paper that I'm assuming most of you have received via e-mail at the beginning of this week. This is a 80-page report where Azimut is elaborating and discussing, and providing an outlook on how digital developments are essential to redefine the engagement with clients and to draw the lines of our business in the years to come. It's also an opportunity to see what Azimut has been building over the last few years in the digital space, certainly with focus on AI, blockchain and the development of cloud services, or tools working even on the Metaverse.

And I would like to mention here in Slide 16, something that is not very known to the public apart from the clients who have decided to entrust us through digital channels. I would like to mention here, as I mentioned, digital solutions that are already live in the market. These are real apps that I've seen over the last 3 years, gathering more than 50,000 clients that have been empowered by Azimut's platforms around the globe to access asset management investment solution as well as a broader scope of financial services.

I would pause here for a second, and I will hand over to Alessandro for a detailed review of our H1 results.

So thank you, Giorgio. Good afternoon to everyone. So moving to Slide 17. Let me now walk you through the key financial developments for the first half of 2025.

So starting with revenues, we recorded an overall increase of approximately EUR 9 million compared to the first half of last year. I mean this growth was primarily driven by a 7%, or EUR 36 million increase in recurring fees. So a solid performance that reflects the continued expansion of our assets under management and administration despite volatile market -- that we see in the market during the first half of the year.

So in particular, we note that our Luxembourg [indiscernible], so the open-ended funds and the private market funds contributed EUR 8.6 million, and EUR 6.3 million more compared -- so a reflection again of our continuous platform build-out and nice product offering. So the level of the discretionary portfolio management and the advisory fee increased by EUR 3 million compared to last year, and as well the international operations added EUR 18 million to the top line. Here, the U.S. stands out with EUR 8.54 million from Kennedy Capital, and as well EUR 0.7 million from HighPost following the perimeter changes that characterized the first half of the year. But as well also behind on that, Brazil, Singapore and Turkey, which all recorded positive organic growth.

Quarter-over-quarter, revenues were up by EUR 1 million, a balanced result considering the FX impact and also the perimeter changes in the U.S., and softer market condition in Q2. That shows again how resilient our revenues base is even in uncertain condition. So the level of the variable fees contributed less in the half year period, EUR 6 million less compared to the previous period. Despite this, Brazil, Turkey and Monaco made a solid contribution during the semester, more than offsetting the negative impact of the fulcrum fees.

Then looking to the insurance revenue, the headline decline of EUR 23 million year-on-year, and this is entirely due to the lower performance fee. On the positive side, we can see that there is a positive recurring insurance revenue that increased by over EUR 5 million, and this is reflecting again the asset growth and the product mix. And furthermore, with current market condition and looking to our performance achieved during July for our clients, we see a robust 3Q '25 outlook for performance fees in this segment.

And then to conclude the revenue section, the other revenue remained broadly flat year-on-year. So to sum up, again, our revenue performance in the first half shows the power of our diversified global platform and our ability to grow even more in a challenging environment.

So then on the following page, we show the evolution of cost. Overall, we note an increase of around EUR 20 million, plus 6%. Starting with distribution costs, we recorded an increase of about EUR 18 million. This variation was mainly driven by higher distribution expenses in line with the growth in recurring revenue, both in Italy and across our international business. We see an increase in provision for variable incentives to the Italian financial adviser, and additional costs related to the TNB project.

Personnel costs increased by approximately EUR 3 million, and this reflects the continued cost discipline and a stable evolution of our Italian operation and as well the ongoing investment to support the international expansion, including the perimeter effect from the integration of Kennedy Capital was netted by a positive foreign exchange impact.

Finally, depreciation and amortization, together with provision remained broadly unchanged compared to the previous year. And it is worth noting that Q2 2025 benefit from the release of a provision related to a legal case, which has offset part of the normal increase of the cost during the quarter.

Moving then to the next slide, we conclude the income statement analysis with recurring EBIT and recurring net profit, which increased by 9%, or EUR 22 million -- and 18%, so EUR 36 million. This trend highlights again the strong of the -- the robustness of the business, not only in terms of recurring impact, but also through contribution below the EBIT. And we have EUR 21 million from asset and portfolio performance, including the revaluation in accounting element through the revaluation of the majority stake in HighPost and Kennedy Capital, EUR 12 million from fair value option and equity participation that includes also Sanctuary and Australia, EUR 6 million from dividends from GP stakes and affiliates, EUR 6 million from the net interest earned and then a negative impact of EUR 2 million from the IFRS 17.

So now let me turn to the net financial position on Slide 20. At the end of June '25, our balance sheet remains strong and debt-free, even after significant investments and shareholder distribution made during the period. We closed the first half with cash and cash equivalents of EUR 643 million, compared to almost EUR 1 billion in -- as at the end of March, and EUR 750 million at the end of the year 2024.

The variation reflects the seasonability of our cash flow and deployment of capital across strategic areas. So overall, we have a net financial position of approximately EUR 642 million with a negative variation of around EUR 110 million compared to December '24. This change is due to the positive pretax result contribution of EUR 329 million, but we need also to consider the deployment resources across the four key areas.

So first of all, we received EUR 68 million in proceeds from the partial disinvestment of our stake in AZ NGA. We invested EUR 50 million primarily into M&A and platform development, including the expansion of Kenny Capital, HighPost across U.S., but also Italy and Brazil. Third, we paid out EUR 170 million for tax advances, stamp duties and contribution to the actuarial reserves.

And then lastly, we returned a total of EUR 354 million to shareholders. And this EUR 323 million through the ordinary dividends and payments on participating financial instruments, and EUR 31 million for share buyback, repurchasing 1.4 million shares at an average price of EUR 23. To conclude, our balance sheet remains well capitalized and positioned to support continued growth and shareholder return.

Finally, on Slide 21, a quick update on the TNB project. We are simply confirming that we are actively working with Bank of Italy on the contractual documentation, the future structure of TNB, with the goal of moving quickly into the final and more detailed phase. So now in this phase, we are dealing with the prefiling with Bank of Italy. And we remain obviously focused and the expectation is completing the transaction at the end of the year.

To conclude, we would like also to remark again the expected outcome of the disposal, so around EUR 1.2 billion potential total consideration for the disposal of an 80% stake, to FSI and the co-investors, EUR 2.4 billion revenue guarantee in the net commissions over time with a minimum of 12 years, and then almost 20% retained stake in TNB's offering potential for the value upside for us.

And with this, I hand over to Giorgio for the final part of the presentation.

Thank you, Alessandro. So to conclude this presentation, let me turn to our upgraded targets.

So we look into the second half of the year with very strong confidence. Our pipeline includes 15 new product launches across public markets, private markets, insurance and club deal. And in parallel, we also are rolling our AI-powered financial planning tools designed to enhance the effectiveness of our financial advisers and deliver personalized solutions at scale for our clients.

From these initiatives, and our commercial partnerships, as well as wealth management solutions, we expect to generate an additional EUR 4 billion to EUR 7 billion in organic inflows. And in parallel, we anticipate EUR 14 billion from M&A, driven primarily by the upcoming closing of the NSI transaction expected by year-end, and the Morocco deal that has been completed in the last few days. So with record inflows already achieved and clear visibility on the remainder of the year, we are upgrading our 2025 net inflows guidance to between EUR 28 billion and EUR 31 billion. And let me tell you that this is nearly 3x our original target and reflects the strength and scalability of our global platform.

So turning to the last slide. Following the strong results of the first half, we're also revising our 2025 net profit target to above EUR 1 billion. The previous guidance was for approximately EUR 1 billion. So with EUR 250 million already delivered in the first 6 months, we have reached 60% of the original lower end guidance that we provided at the beginning of the year, giving us clear momentum going into the second half. But more importantly, I believe this performance should lead the market to reassess expectations about Azimut's recurring net profit, not only for 2025, but also for the years ahead.

Our operating model is proving to be more scalable, more diversified, certainly more resilient than ever. As such, 2025 net profit is projected to exceed EUR 1 billion. And let me remind you that, that is dependent on TNB receiving authorization to operate in 2025. That is the base case and obviously being subject to the final accounting treatment of the transaction upon closing.

So looking ahead, the next appointment is for the beginning of November, November 6, to be precise, when we will present our new strategic targets and update our shareholder remuneration policy. And at the same time, we will also release our 9-month results. So all in all, this will mark the beginning of the next phase in Azimut's value creation journey, and I can only encourage you to stay tuned.

And with this, we are opening the floor for questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Giovanni Razzoli of Deutsche Bank.

I have two questions and one clarification. The clarification is in Slide #19. If Alessandro can share with us what was the -- out of the EUR 43 million of financial income -- finance income that you reported in the first half, what was the impact in the second quarter? And in particular, if you can clarify what is the EUR 21 million that you booked from assets and portfolio performance and how much of this is in the second quarter?

The other two questions are more of a strategic flavor. I was wondering what is your appetite now for bolt-on acquisition and the pipeline that you have of acquisition like the one that you have made on NSI, you have invested EUR 100 million. It seems to me that it's a very, very smart move to consolidate your presence in the States, combining and other assets that you have. So what shall we expect from here? Do you still see other deals like this one? And clearly, I'm asking you this in the context of the upcoming presentation of the new distribution strategy in November, so we can have an idea how much focus is on bolt-on acquisition, GPI stakes and potential improvement in the distribution strategy?

And the final question is on the TNB transaction. I don't know whether you can comment on this, but Bloomberg a couple of weeks ago reported that the mainstream IT player in Italy would have shown an interest to buy an up to 5% stake in TNB to play the role of technological partner. Can you confirm this news? Is there something that is a reliable report or not?

So let me start with the details of the EUR 28.9 million of finance income that we booked in the quarter, in particular. So I was sharing with you the accounting effect, I would say, driven by the consolidation of the HighPost acquisition and Kennedy Capital. So both of them contributed almost EUR 6 million in the quarter and in particular, through the consolidation of HighPost. So that is the main one that is, let me say, contributing to the variation.

And then in general, the valuation fair value portfolio, that means the liquidity that we manage around our operation in Italy and also internationally. So again, there is a positive contribution in fair value from Turkey, from Ireland and as well from Azimut Holding, I would say, so the level of the holding. On top of that, we have also the positive contribution of the interest rate coming from the pure liquidity that we have on the current accounts.

Okay. So I'll pick up the other two questions, Giovanni. So the first one is regarding our appetite for nonorganic growth. Obviously, Azimut will be continuously looking to grow. Certainly, as opposed to the previous 5 years, now we have achieved what is a pretty remarkable footprint across 20 different markets.

As you have seen more recently, when we announced our expansion to Saudi Arabia, that was essentially a greenfield initiative. It took us 2 years to complete, but we didn't have really to invest money apart from obviously engaging with authorities and lawyers, I mean the typical administrative work that you do in this situation. So certainly, we look to consolidate what we have built so far. And I think we have a scale that will allow us to deliver organic earnings growth out of what we have today. Never say never, but if there are acquisitions certainly will be more of the bolt-on nature that you mentioned.

What we have done with NSI, it goes exactly to this direction, something that makes our U.S. platform stronger, more effective, certainly an enabler of growth, but complementing what we have done over the last few years. Obviously, it's a very major transaction in financial terms. And as we are today, we do not see anything of the same scale happening in the short or the medium term.

When we will update on our targets at the beginning of November, we will certainly provide a view of where we see potential areas of development for the firm, and we might provide you guidance on what is our commitment on that respect.

As far as the press articles that you mentioned, we can only talk about the things that we know. And the only thing that we know is that we negotiated the TNB transaction with one party only, and that was FSI. So obviously, we don't know and we are not aware of anything else happening around it. And the binding terms were signed by FSI, and we stand by what we know, as I said.

The next question is from Gian Luca Ferrari of Mediobanca.

Three for me, please. The first one is on the EUR 5.2 billion inflows -- EUR 5.1 billion, sorry, reported in Italy year-to-date. I was wondering if you can break it down between organic growth, recruitment and potentially Nova. How much Nova contributed in the EUR 5.1 billion?

And again, on Nova. Can you give us a sense on what could be the contribution for full year 2025? And potentially, what kind of dilution should we put in our models considering the 50 basis points guidance on those flows?

The second question is on the new net income guidance, the above EUR 1 billion. If I recall correctly, you originally said you were including what was your assumption of the earn-out to be cashed in. So my question here is how much of the EUR 1.2 billion is included in this new guidance?

And the third and final one is on personnel and G&A. It was a very, very low number, what you reported in Q2. So considering this EUR 122 million of personnel and G&A in the first half, how much we can consider this number in the first semester sustainable for the full year?

Gian Luca, I will pick up your first question, and then I will leave Alessandro to respond to the other two.

As far as our Italian business, most of our growth is organic. So I have to say this has been very much a business generated by our current footprint. I think you all understand, understand the curiosity around the contribution of Nova, but you will understand that it's very hard for us to provide visibility on client contribution to a business. We will never do that for any client.

I think Nova is a private factory that has been set up within a partnership with UniCredit. And I think UniCredit might be happy and able to give you an answer to this question. But let me tell you that in general, this is a business that just started up. There is essentially a very negligible contribution to our earnings. So to talk about dilution in terms of margins, I think probably will be almost a meaningless conversation considering the early stage of the partnership. I think in the past, we guided for Nova business to generate between 40 and 50 basis points net income on AUM. And we see this still as a very solid guidance for the years to come.

So for the -- I mean, referring to the net profit guidance, I mean, we slightly increased, let me say, we go for the EUR 1 billion reference, mainly driven by not really to the fact that we changed, let's say, the effect of the consideration of the TNB impact, but it's more of the current business that we are running that is demonstrating very clear and positive results. Therefore, we end up with a positive view that we have through the end of the year. And then...

Can we know how much is the TNB included in that guidance?

In this guidance, I mean, we are running around EUR 600 million impact on the TNB. So back to the cost. So back to the personnel and SG&A, as that was explained for the Q2 evolution. We -- as I clearly mentioned the fact that despite the increase of the perimeter, so we were expecting anyway an increase in terms of cost, we were benefiting of FX positive impact. Therefore, going forward, we expect anyway an increase of the cost going forward, so in Q3 and Q4, but let's say, keeping a normal level of evolution through the -- also what we are doing in the business in general. So the guidance that we also presented at the beginning of the year, I think that we can keep it as a reference for the moment.

The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM.

A couple of questions from my side. The first one is on the Americas region. Now you reached a new setup, thanks to also this last announcement on North Square, so EUR 50 billion of total assets, which also include Sanctuary.

I was wondering if you can give us an idea what is the earnings capacity potential of this new setup you have, compared to what you show in Slide 12. So the -- based on EUR 13 billion of assets. And also, if you can give us more color on what could be in the future, the contribution of North Square to the results of this region? That would be helpful also to model for the future the contribution.

Second question is on, again, on the net inflows guidance, EUR 4 billion to EUR 7 billion, excluding M&A. Is that fair to assume that the contribution will continue mostly to come from what we have seen already in the first half in your expectations? So again, organic contribution in Italy, Nova partnership and -- or there is something that we should bear in mind about what you expect to be the contributor to net inflows going into the next months? I think these are basically my questions.

Alberto. I'll try to answer both questions. So regarding the Americas, obviously, again, here, at the beginning of November, we will certainly be providing more visibility on what our ambitions are there. But if you were to model this in the short term, I think you should expect growth for the assets of NSI in the region of 10% per annum, that is something, I think, realistic for the next 3 to 5 years with an average profitability in terms of net income on AUM of approximately 25 basis points. That is actually in line with what we have right now. So I think we should not expect anything diluting our overall business. As I said, that is an engine of growth and a very major enabler to address a very wide audience in the U.S. comprising of RIAs, wirehouses, broker-dealers, I mean, investment consultants. So it's a pretty major deal when it comes to having what is a top access to different distribution channels.

And as far as our expectations for net inflows, the EUR 4 billion to EUR 7 billion, I think the math here are very simple. At the bottom end of this range, we would expect business to continue show growth. We have to be mindful that we have August and September ahead of us that traditionally are low contributors to the overall production in our business. But we continue working.

There is one obsession that everyone has in Azimut that is growing the business every day. So there is no vacation or summer holiday that will impact our commitment, our determination. I have to say that as we are a global entity today, it's the summer on this part of the world, is winter somewhere else. So people keep working every day. And I think the range reflects at the bottom, a realistic yet conservative assumption for the next few weeks -- few months, sorry, at the top end, a continuation of what we have seen year-to-date.

Okay. Maybe you can update us on the trends on July net inflows as well, or it's too early?

Well, obviously, we will release July inflows in the next few days, but you should not expect anything that is too far from what you have seen over the last couple of months.

The next question is from Elena Perini of Intesa Sanpaolo.

I have only one left, which is about the resiliency of your management fees, which was, for me, a positive surprise. Considering that the second quarter started quite in a difficult way due to Liberation Day and so on. Then what are your expectations for the second part of the year to have a steady growth? What could be the challenges for this very important line of your P&L?

Elena, so I'll pick up your second question, and maybe I'll ask Alessandro for the first. Actually, I didn't really catch exactly what you were asking. Maybe Alessandro got it better than me.

So as we -- as you mentioned, Liberation Day was obviously a market event that disrupted certainly performance and created very volatile market conditions. I think when I look across the board, the performance that we have generated across all the product segments has been remarkable. I think this is down to diversification at the end of the day. And we have been able, particularly when you look at the Italian market to initially sort of decouple from the overall performance of the industry as you know, is very much geared into fixed income, low-risk solutions. We are more of an equity house when it comes to Italy. But after the initial blip, we have then caught back -- and caught up and closed the sort of performance gap that we had accumulated over the first few weeks of April.

As we look at the rest of the year, we remain positive. The house view is constructive. Obviously, we have 220 portfolio managers. It's not that all of them think the same. But in general, when we look at our investment committees, we are advising clients, adding risk to portfolios, but markets are open and every day, and we can change our views if circumstances require.

So -- but let me tell you something that Alessandro briefly mentioned, that is for your models and earnings outlook for Q3, because of negative performance around Liberation Day and our ability to catch up with markets delivering positive performance versus market. Obviously, we have now a very strong outlook for performance fees for Q3. And I think that will show for our 9-month results. Certainly, that is the case for what we see at the end of July, with touching wood, that will continue being the case also for August and September.

So referring to the Q2 recurring fees, probably the real explanation goes through the fact that we are consolidating Kennedy Capital that we were consolidating in the first quarter just for 1 month. Therefore, here, we have a full quarter of the contribution coming from Kennedy Capital on one side. And probably also, we were able, as we were mentioning before, also to recover the underperformance on the market quickly on one side and as well, thanks to our exposure on private markets, for sure, we kept, let's say, the level of the management fees protected from the volatility of the market. So the combination of those elements gave us this positive and incredible results for the quarter.

The next question is from Hubert Lam of Bank of America.

I've got three. Firstly, on Slide 20, where you talked about your net financial position, you mentioned EUR 117 million payment for taxes and others, including actuarial reserves. Can you just -- is it possible to kind of give us some more clarity in terms of the breakdown in terms of these costs within this number? It seems like a pretty significant sum here.

Second is also on the slide. You mentioned EUR 618 million of net financial position at the end of June with EUR 640 million of cash. Just checking how much of that cash can be used for deployment in terms of like capital return? Is it entirely fungible, is the question.

And lastly, if you can give us an update on the number of financial advisers you have in Italy? And then just what have the trends recently been in terms of financial adviser headcount?

Okay. Hubert, I'll pick up your second question regarding cash in our balance sheet. In the past, we guided in terms of cash available overnight, so that we can really take out from our bank accounts with no impact on the business in the region of 60%, the overall amount. Obviously, the rest will be for working capital, regulatory requirements and cash that you need to run the business as you should. So 60-40, that will be the sort of split.

The level of the taxes, I mean, it's difficult to decline every single contribution in terms of tax. I mean, we are in an environment where we are present in 20 countries, therefore, with different rules, with different mechanism. There are situation where you also have to anticipate the further tax that you, let's say, see in the future. Therefore, it's a split of different amount that we have obviously paid during the first half.

And at the level of the number of financial advisers today, we have 1,779 financial advisers in Italy.

So according to -- I think my numbers is -- that number has been trending down over the last 6 months? I just wondering the trends there.

Yes, yes, you're right. It might be trending down, but assets are growing. So I think the guys who are left are doing a better job than those who have gone. So I think we are pretty okay with that. Also, Hubert, you should also take into account that there is -- these are not people leaving to the competition. There is also an aging factor in our financial advisers base. That is the case for even our competitors. Sometimes that is a very normal occurrence. Advisers leave the company, but they leave the portfolio with other advisers who are part of Azimut. So sort of transition and transfer the portfolio to former colleagues.

The next question is from Luigi De Bellis of Equita.

Two questions left for me. The first one, if you can provide some guidance on the evolution for the coming quarters in terms of insurance revenues and distribution costs? And also what you are assuming in the guidance in the low end of the guidance in terms of performance fees?

The second question, thank you for the additional colors on the business line, very helpful. Referring to the Slide #9 and 10, how do you see the profitability to move forward in the different business line? Which are the main business engines that will drive growth going forward in your view?

Luigi, so I will take the second and I leave Alessandro with the first. So when you look at our breakdown, our view in general is that we are able to maintain these margins. If you were to ask me whether growth will be diluting with the current level? It might happen, but we will be adding assets and business to a pretty consolidated base. And as such, dilution shouldn't really be too apparent.

Certainly, we work always taking pride of our ability to provide integrated solutions to our clients. And that is in itself the very reason why we are able to maintain and sustain margins that we see at the end of the day in line with the industry. And very often, when people look at our business, there is sort of misunderstanding where people look at the top line and they try to draw conclusions regarding potential pressure on our fees.

But when you look at the bottom line, I think we do a pretty decent job, and we're obviously operating as a lean organization, but we see these levels as very sustainable and the fact that we are integrated makes our business to be much stickier. Obviously, nothing will be possible without performance. And at the end of the day, this is what clients look at the end, whether we are making money for them. I mean, if that is the case, they're very happy to pay a fee.

So in relation to the insurance revenue and the evolution, as Giorgio was mentioning, we see a positive -- I mean, we have a positive view on the performance fees. Therefore, in Q3, we expect a positive contribution from the performance fee. Obviously, the market could change. Therefore, it's something that we see at the end of July, but we don't like to bet on the performance. So we always try to keep a lower expectation on what we could do without have any negative effect in the future, I would say.

So at the level of the guidance, again, positive -- we are positive on the quarter and also on the variable fees, as you -- I mean, we always do, we keep a level of EUR 15 million full year as we do normally. So we would like to keep, let's say, the same level. And at the level of distribution cost as well, obviously, we expect an increase because we expect to grow. But I mean, keeping again the same guidelines that we presented at the beginning of the year.

[Operator Instructions] Mr. Medda, there are no questions at this time. Sir, back to you for any closing remarks.

Fantastic. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining this call. And obviously, we wish you all a great summer, and talk to you next time. Bye.